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I've been following this thread quite closely, and I have some thoughts.
First of all, you'll find that MIT does a great job of admitting the top students in a given field. Five of the six members of the 2008 USA International Mathematical Olympiad team are here at MIT. The students I know from math class are either IMO contestants, foreign IMO contestants, MOPpers, RSIers, or USAMO stars. In fact, I firmly believe that the mathematical community here is much richer than in other schools. I know the same is true of other sciences, such as physics and electrical engineering.
Secondly, though MIT is a tech school, not everyone does engineering or math. Plenty of my friends major in biology, economics, management, or architecture, for instance.
I think those not admitted with stellar scores may have had better scores than those who showed passion in different majors, but may have had accomplishments less tailored to those other majors.
As an addendum, 10 on last year's USAMO was not particularly difficult (problem 1 was trivial). It was probably the easiest USAMO in the past 5 years. Also, the USAMO has expanded in size, making qualifiers more numerous.
As another addendum, an IMO perfect scorer was once rejected for not being a good fit. He is still a great mathematician, but it goes to show that other factors are involved, such as fit.
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