@Data10, I certainly agree that strong academics aren’t enough, but at the same time Stanford admits about 2,100 students a year and not all of them are the best in the country at something. And, the Common Data Set for Stanford shows that depending on the SAT section, between 69% and 78% of Stanford admits score 700 or above per section. Just mathematically, a large majority of admits are going to be at 2100 and above.
If Stanford rejects most with 2400 SATs it wouldn’t be a big surprise as it rejects 95% of applicants, but I’m willing to bet that a lot more than 5% of the students with high academics are admitted. There are fewer than 600 people a year with a 2400 by the way.
There’s an interesting interview with Dean Fitzsimmons of Harvard posted on the On Harvard Time YouTube channel. Admittedly it’s Harvard not Stanford, but he says in the case of Harvard, there are 200-300 admits each year who excel at a national/international level in something, 200-300 are academic stars, and the rest (the large majority of admits) are what he calls “good all arounders” at a very high level in multiple areas but not necessarily a star in any one thing.