Lower admission credentials? Who cares? the school is so skewed toward the “perfect” range anyway that even 50 points on something like the SAT will not really result in differences in performance. Again, how people do at these levels becomes a function of how rigorous their academic program is and their work ethic. A person with scores that say “you should not do as well as others” can often end up doing just fine or simply just finding a higher grading academic program. With college, there is tons of choice even among academically elite students and an academically elite college. You can choose a program that will challenge you or you cannot. In HS, if you are aiming for elite colleges, you pretty much deal with whatever hand you are dealt by curricular offerings and the instructors that teach them. A person coming from a very tough high school may actually end up working and even thinking less at many elite colleges especially if they choose to not place in more advanced coursework early on.