As I touched on earlier, Stanford rejects most applicants who have perfect stats – 2400 SAT / 36 ACT, 4.0+ GPA, valedictorian, etc. Nobody gets in with top academic stats and otherwise being “regular”. The ones who do get in have something else impressive that helps to really stand out among the tens of thousands of applicants. For example, in a previous year I analyzed the Stanford decision thread on this forum. The rejected CC posters as a whole actually had higher average stats than the accepted posters – the rejected posters had slightly average higher test scores, GPA, course rigor, significantly higher class rank, etc. If you look at stats alone, it might appear that the decisions were completely random, maybe with a slight preference for lower scores. However, when you look at the rest of the post, then the decisions become clear. There was a strong preference for posters who shine in other ways, such as out of classroom activities including ECs and awards, often with something that was impressive on a state+ or high regional level. I expect the negative correlation between acceptance and academic stats occurred because among forum posters, valedictorian/2400 types were more likely to apply with “regular” rest of application than the lower stat posters.
I haven’t heard of many unhooked Stanford applicants who had an SAT not much above the national average, but had a really amazing rest of application that was as good as most accepted students. This small a sample size makes it difficult to say how low a score is too low to bother applying. I can say that Stanford does accept unhooked applicants with test scores well below the 25th percentile scores, so I certainly wouldn’t assume they need to exceed the median score. For example, a parent on this forum mentioned that her unhooked daughter was accepted with an 1890 SAT. As I recall, she was valedictorian of her class with excellent grades, showing the she could handle the coursework at Stanford; and she also won several state level Future Farmer’s of America awards, which I expect is quite unique among Stanford applicants and helps to really stand out. I was accepted unhooked several years ago with about the same combined SAT, but mine was split up as 500 CR with 800 math, and being a prospective engineering major they probably gave the math/science test scores more weight than CR. I showed I could handle Stanford coursework by taking a large number of university classes outside of HS and achieving a 4.0 GPA in those classes, while also standing out in other ways.
The Women’s Tennis team does especially well academically and often wins various Pac-12 Academic awards. As such, their GPAs are posted in news articles. The GPAs and majors of their starting players are below. I’d expect the player described in the YouTube video is also likely to do quite well academically and receive similar academic accolades.
Kostas - 3.99 (Economics)
Tsay - 3.87 (Biology)
Doyle - 3.86 (Undeclared)
Hardebeck - 3.75 (Political Science)
Zhao – 3.74 (STS)
Davidson - ? (academic “honorable mention” )