I think that is a flawed perspective, for many reasons. It assumes that these national competitions were attempted by all students. They were not. There are many thousands of top students who never had access to these competitions, yet are highly talented in Stem subjects and target top -10 private universities, with resumes that include research and straight As /all 5s and the rest. Significant percentages of rigorous public and private high schools have no access to these competitions, yet have top talent vying for schools like Penn. You are not competing against merely the 150 kids who scored higher than you; you are competing against many thousands who are well above the 99th %ile but did not know about competitions. Engineering applicants are overrepresented in the application pool(for 2023 1/4 of the 59000 applicants applied to Seas, yet seas is only 1/6th of the incoming Penn spots: Penn has far more seas applicants than it needs and does not accept by engineering major). You may get in! But your perspective lacks understanding of the applicant pool you are in.
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