@gibby I’m not sure that is a reasonable conclusion given the data from that video.
In fact, I’m fairly certain that it’s not how things work.
Each admissions officer has a docket of files they read. At least for Harvard, I know for a fact that they read every single file. There is no “first cut” using SAT data. Amherst may be different, but my guess it that they do read every single file.
I don’t know what happens after that, but I expect it’s something like each officer is allowed to bring 20% of their docket to the committee. How they decide which ones to bring is up to them.
I don’t think it’s as cut and dried as applying an SAT cutoff score.