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Identifying students who can handle the coursework well enough to graduate is no doubt a key consideration for some colleges, but the highly selective colleges that we have been discussing in this thread don’t exactly struggle to find applicants that are academically qualified enough to graduate. In another thread, a poster mentioned a Harvard admissions officer saying 85% of their applicants were academically qualified, which fits with Harvard’s ~98% 6-year graduation rate. Having an abundance of academically qualified applicants leads to different goals than trying to create a class composed of students with the best chance of a 4.0 in (freshman?) year prior to effects of a curve, by emphasizing the portions of the application that have the highest correlation with (freshman?) year GPA. Instead I’d expect they might admit a kid who sounds like he would make the campus a better place while attending and is likely to do amazing things after graduating, over others who they estimate are more likely to have a 4.0 in freshman year, but don’t really stand out. I certainly wouldn’t assume that the stats that are most correlated with (freshman?) GPA in internal studies are the most important factors in admissions decisions.</p>