The holistic admissions system used at many (particularly top) colleges means that where a student will stand academically within their class is not strongly correlated with whether admission was a reach or not. So for example a student who is very talented academically but does no ECs is likely to be at the top of their class wherever they can feasibly be admitted.
And I thought that schools with admit rates of <10% were supposed to be a reach for all, yet someone is going to be at the top of the class at Harvard.
So while there are certainly A, B, C, D and E students within any college class, it’s far from clear to me that the rationalization given above of why they might be in this position is applicable to a large proportion of them.