<p>It seems like you want some concrete baseline for an unhooked applicant. If your SAT is above 2000, you took challenging courses and got mostly A’s, and you’re a relatively interesting person that does interesting things, then you are “good enough to compete.” </p>
<p>The problem is, any realistically inclusive baseline of objective stats (e.g. 3.0 GPA, 600 subject test scores) would give you an inflated sense of your chances because there are tens of thousands of students that would meet such a criteria. Among that pool of relatively qualified applicants, those that will get accepted are the ones who do interesting things with their time.</p>