You make a good point. And you are 100% correct about Chicago. They really look for the fit – It’s why they offer the creative prompts they do. They want to see how you think and write beyond conventionality. I’ve heard that the creative essay can make or break the Chicago application. And similarly, our Maia data has some bizarre admits and denies for UChicago if you’re just looking at the GPA + SAT/ACT numbers. As you said, very smeary and inconsistent data. It’s what makes Chicago so hard to predict, maybe more than any other school.
So I guess you’re right about the possibility… I’m just pointing out that Swarthmore doesn’t seem to be the type of school the OP is looking for to begin with, so it might be hard to fit that narrative of “fit.”
But you never know. We’ll leave it at that.