I think another reason @sweetest may have got denied is that GaTech instituted a new policy to automatically accept all valedictorians and salutatorians from Georgia High schools! This means that those two students from @sweetest’s high school were guaranteed admission, if they applied. This changed and increased the Ga applications to GaTech this year. GaTech cannot take too many students from any one Georgia High school, I bet they have rules that they have to take students from all over the state of Georgia. It may have been very competitive at @sweetest’s high school this year. She had a 3.9 GPA. The question is how many students had a 4.0 from her high school and how many applied and got into GaTech? They cannot take everyone who applies, there is not room.
I do think those that participate in robotics from Colorado get into GaTech at a much higher rate, and those students who are well rounded and play tennis with perfect grades and scores, are almost always rejected from our Colorado high school. Its a small sample size, though, so beware of drawing conclusions, just a bit more information, in how I see it from here.
MIT rarely accepts our FIRST robotics students, if they do not have another hook. MIT seems to prefer athletes from Colorado, and science fair winners, and also debate winners, with international wins get into MIT. Some robotics students do get into MIT, but they usually also have scored very high on national math exams, or have another hook to get admitted. Athletic talent is a big criteria now at MIT, a differentiator.