Also, I never say that they do not value the “academic” profile. I think I’ve been arguing that these schools define and weight certain elements of the “academic profile” differently. They all have and clearly wanted high scores, but most are making a trade-off between the scores and other components. Maybe things like AP/IB, academic awards and competitions (especially things like debate, math competitions, others…), SAT II subject tests, and things like that matter more. Basically they are putting higher weight on alternative forms of academic engagement once students reach a certain (usually quite high as most top 25’s have a mean well over or approaching 1400/1600) threshold. The “character” of certain campuses certainly reveals this. It is very difficult to argue that students at one non-HYPM schools are, for example, weaker academically than another school with higher SAT/ACT’s. It may or may not be the case (and often isn’t) as we don’t actually know anything beyond those credentials (and of course GPA and the often under-reported class-rank stats). Other things compose “academic profiles” and can gauge the readiness and willingness for students to engage with what is supposed to be an intense academic atmosphere (and of course we also know that once in like the top 25, the correlation between incoming score range and overall feel and intensity of the academic environment is hardly predictable). Like a person who medals at IMO may be much more fit to take advanced math sequences than a student who merely scored 800 on the math SAT and a bit more, a 5 on Calc. AB. They probably both got 800 but are not equal. Some schools are more fine with just the 800 and some great non-academic EC’s, and some schools really really like academic EC’s in conjunction with that (these end up being either the nerdier schools or maybe like Stanford where they try to find ways to seriously gauge “innovation” and “creativity”).
I personally think one way to gauge the strength of a student body once the scores get this high is simply by trying to measure “ambition”. As in, how much do they use their talents, especially students in the upper range of ability at these schools. So one way could be to measure enrollment in top tier math and science courses (like, if you are Harvard, does math 55 and 16 maintain steady enrollment levels. Does Princeton and Northwestern keep steady enrollment or interest in their integrated science programs…that sort of thing) offered to freshmen or willingness of social science and humanities to enroll in special tracks if offered (HUME sequence at Princeton for example). To me the question is always, how fearless and ambitious are all the students as a whole, but especially the top talent. Does the school under or over perform in these terms with certain SAT ranges (like if you are approaching or have surpassed 1500 mean, your benchmark may be HYP enrollments in certain course types)? That can give some more information on “academic readiness” (for example, calc. BC is not enough to handle math 16 or math 55a/b at Harvard and its equivalents at Chicago, Caltech, and MIT). I guess I’d rather gauge by performance and enrollment patterns than the a “2 input” analysis (only GPA and SAT/ACT). Without knowing much else, we simply can’t really tell about differences in academic profile.
However with certain enrollment patterns, one can say…“okay, the students at this school are actually behaving and performing more like this lower scoring school than the ones in its score bracket despite the score difference” or vice versa. If the former is the case, you’re probably underperforming, if the latter, overperforming or performing well. Chicago is likely performing well in context of this sort of analysis as indicated by the fact that it even has similar programmatic offerings to HYP in terms of advanced options (one could argue that UChicago “baseline” classes are also tougher on average than other elites). WashU and Vandy are “alright” (as in pretty damned good, and indeed excellent in many areas but maybe not particularly special academically among elite schools…And that’s okay, because a) it cost lots of money to get up there and b) there are always trade-offs to trying to change the academics) but seem to look more like lower ranked and near ranked schools than those in their SAT brackets. I give WashU an edge in terms of STM offerings (I left out E, because it isn’t that special and Vandy’s is likely just as strong…both are as good as you would expect for elite schools) and levels of the courses (especially intro. and intermediate), but I know not much else outside of that other than both having great writing/English programs for undergraduates (both have been ranked at some point in time, a near top place for writers). I also like the way the psychology (which has a large Peabody contribution) and history program are set up at Vandy but haven’t compared it to WashU’s.