Just because anecdotal evidence is subject to selection and other biases, doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a place. Frankly most of my friends who spoke openly about high school academics were either valedictorian or salutatorian. Some were presidential scholars. Many had perfect IB scores or had topped their countries’ standardized tests. This doesn’t mean that a student ranked 18 doesn’t stand a chance at Yale, but it means that most of my peers who spoke about this did better. It doesn’t mean it’s the most important metric in college admissions either. One of my good friends exemplified this - he was ranked ~11 in a large suburban high school, with no significant extracurriculars, and was a white male from a middle class family. He thrived at Yale, graduating with a GPA of ~3.7 in a hard major, and was also president of an on-campus group he loved.
I do know how data is defined - after working in a quantitative field and graduating from Yale with honors and distinction in STEM, it would be real problem if I didn’t ;).