Not sure I understand the question.
The first person that’ll ED into Williams will usually not be in the top 10% of the class. Also rarely are these people from Math or the Physical sciences.
The top 10% are EA or ED ing into other schools.
I was seeking to explain why you knew of none of your 1st decile students attending highly-selective top LACs. One reason can of course be lack of interest - the other could be that unbeknownst to you, there had been 1st decile students that had been interested but were not offered acceptance (given the very low admit rates).
But I see you already qualified that.
As in - your HS has different academies, one specialized in Math & Sciences?
No. Usually kids know who is inclined towards what majors, at least for the first 2-3 deciles
Understood - if those are the facts at your high school, then it explains the lack in LACs.
I’m not sure how universally true that is - given the share of college students enrolling “undecided” each year.
To add to the anecdotal evidence, this is commonplace at the at the highly competitive high school with which I am most familiar (and from which I have seen detailed admissions numbers by grade point.) It is not at all uncommon for accomplished, STEM focused kids to end up at Stanford or MIT when they would have preferred to attend Williams or Pomona, but were not admitted. And vice versa.
From what I can tell, the idea that the “top kids” all go to non-LAC’s seems to be a myth. The question I have is, why is it such an important myth for some families?
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Plural of anecdote is not data.
Here is data.
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And here’s more data.
Sure seems like the university advocates (if this is what this thread is devolving into) have spent a lot of time distancing themselves from LACs. But just to put the shoe on the other foot, what exactly “defines” a research university?
From chatGPT:
R1 universities are universities that have been designated as having “very high research activity” by the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education.
Wait. Did you just use a bot to answer the question?
The bot polled the internet. I am just citing sources.
And at most LACs you would have been brought before the Honor Board for alleged plagiarism.
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Research universities are very loosey goosey about this. They have much lower standards.
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Well, we’re making progress. That’s more than I knew about teaching standards at research universities a moment ago.
You made it sound like it was a point of distinction. I was just going along with you.
“Data” indicating what, exactly?
If your point is that many or most kids who train for and excel at math competitions attend MIT, then I don’t really think that has much of any relevance here. I would suggest you start another thread on the topic, but there have been so many it would perhaps be a bit redundant.
As I mentioned above, if a student’s preparation and primary goal is to focus on graduate level math as an undergraduate, then MIT is a great choice over institutions that focus on undergraduate training. For many extremely talented students, that isn’t the case.
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…and I’m just going to go along with you too. Indeed, we can go along with each other! 
Revealed preferences of some of the nation’s top STEM students.
So then, more anecdote.
Yes. A lot more.
Transformation of quantity into quality.
Y’know, Dialectics of Nature and all that liberal arts stuff. 