Auto admission is just not holistic.
My guess is top 40 or so scrutinize similarly enough. The 20-40 (in this example) have more to worry about yield than top 20. But it’s not as easy as stats. Nor as superficial as, “He’s super, won’t matriculate here.” The app/supp are key in showing you want that college, understand your match to what they embody, took the time to explore this college, etc. (More than visiting or an email list.)
NYU used to have some challenging very short answer questions, eg, to weed out kids confusing NYU with NYC, among other things.