You’d be surprised at how many students there are who have made their mark on a national level in high school. Remember - you don’t have to be THE top person in the country, or in the world, and remember, there are international students applying too, who ARE the top students in their countries, because those silly little countries still have highly competitive performance-based college matriculation exams, instead of “everybody gets a trophy” cultures.
Top players in each musical instrument, in all different types of music. Top level in each science, in math, art, composition, history, creative writing, poetry, debate, model UN, the list goes on and on. Top achievers in acting, musical theater, vocal music. Top achievers in sports which are not recruited-athlete sports, such Olympic sports which are not played at colleges. Presidential scholars. There are so many top awards that people don’t know about. Sure, the kid also has to have a good essay, but the essays are often not reflections of the student’s own work. There’s an entire industry of English teachers helping kids buff their essays. They have to have some sort of community involvement, but this isn’t that hard to do, especially when it’s related to kid’s primary area of achievement. “I placed in the top ten in a national chess competition, and I started a club with the best chess players at my high school to bring chess to inner city elementary schools just across the city line from my excellent suburban high school”. Plus there are kids who started charities that really do have an impact citywide, or even across the nation. There are so many ways in which a kid can make her mark on a national level, and if they have excellent grades and scores, it’s not too hard to make the rest of the application shine. After all, that’s what those expensive admissions counselors are paid to do.
Now consider that there are private prep schools in the country that seem to have a pipeline into the top schools. I think that some 1/3 of seats go to these students, although of course there is overlap with legacies, recruited athletes in sports that most public schools don’t have, and children of big donors. So say we’re left with fewer than 7500 seats - maybe 5000, for the public school kids. And I bet you that there are 5000 kids with top grades and top scores, who have also achieved at the national level in SOMETHING. They are going to be given most of those seats, because they have top level academics and scores, PLUS national level achievement in something.
So now we get to the public schools, of which the US has some 24000 schools. 24000 valedictorians. 48000 if we want to count the salutatorians, too. 72000 if we count the top 3. And of course, some of those public schools are Bronx Science, Stuyvesant, Boston Latin, and other well-known, highly ranked “exam” schools. The top 10% at those schools are highly qualified too. All of them with excellent grades. Some with high test scores, although who knows whether those would ever be mandatory again. Most of them also leading clubs, captaining sports teams, editing the newspaper, leading student council, being elected class president, leading school volunteer groups. There are very few seats left for these kids - and how do you tell them apart from one another? They all have excellent qualifications and EC achievements at the school or local level. There are probably over 100,000 of them, competing for fewer than 5000 seats - since the legacies, donor kids, URMs, top prep school kids, best in their country kids, and best in their special field of interest kids have taken most of those seats.
At this point, it’s a crap shoot. NOW it’s whose incredible essay (written hopefully by the student) grabs them. NOW it’s the kid with the amazing film supplement (film maker big brother makes a film about his brother’s high school life) who gets in - which I never understood - shouldn’t it have been the big brother who MADE the film, to get in? There are now so few seats left, that now it’s really a crap shoot, because THESE are the highly qualified candidates with whom the schools could fill the seats ten times over. Great grades, great scores, nice local EC achievements. Most of them not getting in.
This Yale student’s spike was so big that he cannot say what it is, or he’d reveal his identity. THAT is what got him in. Sure, he had great grades, a very nice ACT. But if what he’d done was made All-State for something, it wouldn’t dox him to reveal it. LOTS of people make All-State for something. The ones with the great grades and scores and class president aren’t getting in. Regionals for something aren’t getting in. Even All State for something aren’t getting in. All National? Maybe yes. Olympic level? Even more so maybe yes, probably yes, even if it’s for ice dancing, which last I knew was not a collegiate sport. Local science award? Nope. Intel Science top ten? Very possibly yes.