Good for you and no offense intended. It’s just that anything less than a 750 on SAT I is almost disqualitying for the people who state a CS or math interest in Stanford or CMU CS. You can’t just compare yourself to the 25-75 or medians when you’re looking at this cross-section of applicants. And anyone is going to be a longshot for either of those schools with a 5% acceptance rate. My D’s class had over 5 top students apply to Stanford REA this year, including three NMSFs and one 1600 CR/M and every single one was rejected, not even deferred. The year before, a girl who had the highest GPA at the school in the last decade and a 2390 SAT was rejected REA by Stanford (though four others with humanities focused applications got in).
I recall reading or hearing it somewhere, but honestly I can’t find anything like that by googling so maybe I’m misremembering. But I do think it’s important to note that schools like MIT have underrated humanities departments. MIT can recruit some of the best humanities faculty in the world just because it is in Cambridge. Some professors are spouses of other professors at Harvard or MIT, and MIT pays extremely well. A top flight French PhD faculty candidate might be more likely to take a position at MIT than a Swarthmore or a Duke or some other more highly rated department because of the location or spousal issues.