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Different schools run by different philosophies, and the bottom line is that these "perfect applicants" rejected from MIT may very well be accepted at Caltech, and then go to MIT for grad school. I don't know if there are students admitted to MIT who really do not do great things once they get there...maybe. I think there are probably some of those at any undergrad school.
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There are indeed applicants who seem to outrank other applicants who do not do "great things" once they get into a top-ranked (or even a lower-ranked) school. You hear about these people all the time. Why would so-and-so who was a superstar HS academic, EC, etc. be struggling? The answers vary. But it would be difficult to argue that the (statistically) lesser-qualified admit who wound up graduating was somehow (actually) lesser-qualified than the superstar admit who did not. (Especially since the goal of the admissions committee seems to be to admit the people who are most likely to graduate.)
In MIT's case, we do not know how the admissions committees interpret the essays or interviews, but I imagine they use them to try to gauge how well the student is likely to function in the MIT environment. This certainly has a bearing on how likely the person is to graduate.
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But my general point is that while it may seem "obvious" to some of us that a perfect math or engineering applicant should be accepted to MIT's undergrad, well it may just be that MIT has accepted too many of those, and doesn't see it fit to admit 100% of those, which it SURELY could, given how likely it is these students would accept the admissions offers if received.
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Ah, but if they're all applying to the same set of top-ranked schools, they're not necessarily going to accept MIT ... I don't know how this factors into admissions, however. But it could be like university faculty hiring. Someone on CC posted something awhile back about not being able to recruit URMs to a low-tier university because if offered a position at a top-tier university as well, they'd almost certainly take it.