“… I am surprised that a school like U Chicago that seems hell bent on keeping their stats at a certain level (low acceptance rate, high yield) would not accept an ED applicant with a 36, unless there was an issue with the GPA that showed underachieving? Very strange…”
Actually, not strange at all. If you think a 36/4.0/national awards kid is one or two in the applicant pool of a school like UChicago your estimate is way off, not by a factor of ten, not even a factor of a hundred, it is off by a factor of a thousand! Just do the math: every year there are about 2300 kids who score ACT 36 and about 700 kids with 1600/2400 SAT. Those are just one sitting scores. And out of the 3000 perfect scorers a year my guess is that 2200 of them are Asian kids and 1500 of them are Asian boys. To make matters worse, in a few dozen of national contests where there are objective measures such as US Olympiads in math, phys, chem, bio, CS etc, about 70% of top 200 kids are Asian boys.
So, if a typical high achieving Asian boy applies to every top ten school, UChicago would see 1500 of them. But it can only take in about 150 of them, which means that nine of ten of those 36/4.0/national awards kids will be rejected by a school like UChicago.
The Asian boy I know with 36/4.0 and top five in his EC and even national TV appearance, and etc etc, was deferred ED and rejected by UChicago and every other ten top school this year. He ended up going to a state flagship school. If you have read CC long enough it should not come as a surprise because numbers don’t lie.
That’s what gives so many kids and their families, especially Asian American ones so much stress. Every year in areas where there are high achieving Asian kids, the stress and depression lead to several suicides in high school, not because they are all Ivy worshipers, but because the sense of societal rejection and self worthlessness can be overwhelming.
Unfortunately, lot of those parents are helpless in alleviating such stress as lots of them are ill-equipped in language and culture to make the kids see the larger picture.