I do believe that UChicago has a particular incentive to post those low ends. As Nondorf has stated “we send signals by our policies.”
The reason they went TO in the first place is because they knew they were having difficulty reaching a certain type of high achieving applicant (who would be scared off by the high median scores) and that, among others, UChicago (and Nobel laureate) economist JJ Heckman has done excellent studies on predictors for college success and found that GPA dominates test scores.
The truth is, when both the testing agencies and the colleges allowed multiple retakes, “score choice” and superscoring, they significantly watered down the valuable predictive power of test scores. It’s just a ‘prep’ game at that point (no one is guaranteed to “prep” their way to a 34, of course, but it’s much easier to achieve one via superscoring so if that gets the same weight as a single-shot 34, then what exactly is the value of testing?).
As I said upthread, what the adcom sees and what the AO has on file for all their admits might have some differences. Totally agree that it might be due to superscoring or even TO admits who had already submitted scores (taking advantage of the free score-send) before opting for TO. Another possibility I guess is that someone sent in a low score to make a point, or just didn’t care, and ended up admitted anyway.