I’m spit balling, largely based on local experience. Our high school valedictorian, typically “unhooked”, gets into Harvard about once every 3 to 4 years.
An overall rate of 2-3% is certainly true. But it’s not 2-3% regardless of your achievements. That 2-3% includes tons of kids who are nearly zero. It includes lots of kids who aren’t valedictorians, who didn’t score 1550, who weren’t a Director of Your Engagement for a US Senate campaign, etc. My local school, looking at their Scoir, they have had about 80 kids apply to Harvard in the last 3 years, 2 (or 3, 1 isn’t clear) acceptances out of the 80. So about 2.5%.
But of the 80 applicants… 77 weren’t valedictorians, 75% had SATs below 1550, 50% had SATs below 1500, 50% had GPAs of 3.9 or lower. Lots of kids take a gamble on Harvard. A huge percentage of them, if they don’t have a hook, get eliminated very very quickly.
A student in the top 10% of applicants is not going to have anywhere near the same chances as a student right in the middle of applicants.
Someone who has a 3.95, mediocre extracurriculars and 1450 SAT – which is a ton of their applicants – has a chance far below the overall 3%.
I know that’s the perception, but it’s simply not true. It’s fairly typical of the type of student they accept. But it’s not reflective of the majority of their applicants. They get lots of non-valedictorians applying, lots of non 1550 SATs, etc.
Look at it this way, only 10,000-15,000 kids score 1550+ on their SAT in a given year. Harvard gets 60,000 applicants.
So even if half the 1550+ scorers apply to Harvard, that means only about 10% of their applicants are 1550 or higher on the SAT.
There are 25,000 high schools in the US… So if half of the Valedictorians apply to Harvard, that would mean only about 20% of their applicants are valedictorians.
So being a Valedictorian with 1550+… that’s not their typically applicant. That’s likely in their top 5-10% of applicants.
And as a side note, I plugged in OP’s stats in the College Lab calculator (partner with this site), and it gave a Harvard chance of 27%. So the big data says someone with 4.0, her APs, and 1550, gets accepted to Harvard about 27% of the time. Not sure how accurate that is, but they are looking at far more data than I have available to me.