“And many, many top contenders do not participate, but get their admits on their full merits.”
Olympiad and ISEF winners are denied on institutional, not holistic factors - athletes, legacies, wealth, urm, first-gen. 25% of ISEF winners in a recent four year span got into Harvard, that’s pretty good for unhooked, typically upper middle class Asian. The rest are at Stanford, MIT, CMU, Swarthmore, Harvey Mudd, Cal Tech, Berkeley etc.
As I said previously, the OP knows this as he/she is an AIME but not AMO, so did not ask about chances into MIT or Stanford. If he or she placed in AMO, this would be a totally different conversation.
Recall again, this thread where OP posted saying he won these:
USAJMO (2x)
USAMO (1x)
USACO Platinum
USAPhO Semifinalist
USABO Semifinalist
You: Plus, they look for more than the hierarchical bullets, top of this, winner at that.
Me: Honestly - when I saw your Olympiads, AIME, Intel semi-finalist (indicating one of the top 500 or 1000 STEM applicants in the country), I thought you’d get into most of your colleges outside of Stanford, MIT, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, where I figured you’d get into one or two,
Accepted into Princeton, Brown, UPenn, Yale, Harvard, Stanford (MIT waitlist)
This is not anecdotal but typical given the Olympiad and ISEF. The outlier is getting into all of them outside of MIT, I will grant, usually you get into 1 or 2 of MIT/Stanford/Harvard/Cal Tech.
These awards should not be denigrated, they’re nobel, fields-esque in their importance.