“Sorry, but my head spins when folks try to make some mathematical formula out of a very qualitative process.”
Ok but admissions is by definition a numbers game, it involves all sorts of acceptance rates, ED, RD, EA, SCEA and at the end you have to maximize your chance (again a number) of getting in to your top colleges. I don’t think anybody on cc was surprised by the Houston kid, if we had know about him before the news story, most of us would have predicted he would have gotten into everywhere he applied.
The inverted u-curve is a really good way to look at it, agree with the other posters.