I don’t believe anyone said it should.
But every data point is an opportunity for differentiation. At very top schools, when everyone has 10 AP courses and 99th percentile on all tests, they are combing the fine granular data for differentiation.
When your 25th percentile score is an 800, a 790 diffentiates from the bulk of accepted students.
MIT and Caltech have changed their admissions criteria since this question was asked nearly a year ago, as have CMU, so the choice for OP (which likely made this decision long ago) depends on the “top twenty” schools being targeted. Ivy’s likely have different score profiles.