I wasn’t really saying that it is less holistic, I was talking in general…oliver was subtly trying to suggest that schools should pursue less holistic measures in admissions and that they place too much emphasis on diversity (this can have some truth, but I think it has been over-stated when you account for other patterns). But since you want to go there, places like Vanderbilt, WashU, and Chicago are certainly holistic, just perhaps less holistic than other schools. The incoming scores may be weighted higher at these 3 for whatever reasons…it certainly makes sense for the small contribution it could make to enhance the rank. Also WashU and Vandy give scholarships and could perhaps be setting high score thresholds for those that other other schools don’t do as much. This means that for other privates (or elite publics like UVa) that offer scholarships, it will be more random and less based on the scores (I think Vanderbilt has diversity scholarships for example, and even Asians can get them if they have very high scores…one such winner wrote an article about her plight through the elite school admissions racket and how she struck it rich with Vandy. Thank goodness that played out well because she likely deserved to be at a really good school). They have to be high objectively (as in maybe on average per person, higher than the school’s mean), but ultimately they will be looking for other things that perhaps may only be seen in many successful applicants to HYP (not humdrum successful applicants, but the unusually strong cases that were not necessarily numerically perfect, though HYP of course gets plenty of these).