Depends what info an AO has…assessing whether the student can do the work and is a fit at a given school can be more important than their relative standing in the HS (there can be lots of game playing with GPA and rank for example.)
All the applicants from a given HS who apply to the same college can be compared with each other, but if the school profile doesn’t give info for the current class (GPA, rigor, rank, etc), additional context can be impossible to access. Schools can of course look at historical admits from the HS and some track college performance by HS as well. AOs can also call HS counselors for more info, but IME that’s relatively rare.
I wish OP good luck thru the admissions process and hope they have a well balanced list of schools. They will know about Columbia ED soon enough.