Acceptance to the elite colleges is a daunting task, and there are a variety of reasons that extrodinary grades aren't enough anymore.

First is the ever growing number of applicants without increased numbers of spots. Personally, I blame the common application for this. Think about it, in the old days you had to fill out specific unique applications & write an essay that answered a specific question that the school had on their application, This was a pain in the [lacrosse], and most kids pushed back on the work of doing more than 5 or 6. It was always "one safe, one reach, and 4 probables". Couple that with the fact that the cost of applying to college hasn't really gone up much. In the 70s and early 80's it was about $35-40 bucks per school, now it's $60-80 per app. Most parents are okay with sending out a few extra apps, considering the competition for acceptance, and the kids are now only doing one application so they're on board with more too. Now kids are applying to mid teens, just making getting in that much harder.

Then look at it from the admission offices side. And this is what a good friend was told by the Admission head at Duke three years ago. His son was a high achiever at Duke but his daughter was rejected.....Top grades, volunteer work, extracurriculars and team sports. Just not a star in any.

Anyway, the guy said that every year they get their 18k to 20k applications. From that there are certain things that must be done, and certain things that get the attention of his team. They need to replace all the seniors who make things function. By that he meant sports teams, theater groups, band members, choirs, etc. etc.. This is hundreds of kids, and yes they need to meet academic standards, but if they are elite in their respective discipline then those standards may be lessened.

Then there is the legacy pool. All schools will look at legacies with a slightly different prism. Legacies with a history of financial giving will also be acknowledged, no shock there. Most children of graduates from elite school understand this is a help and will naturally apply to their parents Alma Maters.

The next bucket the dean from Duke mentioned is the VIP kids. These are the sons and daughters of influential folks. For example, kids of senators, CEOs, high profile people (not TMZ people)......you understand. This group might also include kids of foreign officials.

Then throw in the age old desire for these schools to have diversity. They want all 50 states recognized, they want a certain percentage of foreign students.
They want a diversity of ethnicities....duh.

Once they get through filling those slots that must be filled, or accepting the kid that they can't reject for "political reasons", they are left with a very contracted number of open seats. Perhaps as few as 50% of the incoming class.

At Duke, in this particular year they made the decision to cull the heard by eliminating anyone who hadn't achieved something at a National Level. Put another way, they wanted kids who had achieved something that garnered them some sort of national recognition or award. All the applicants that didn't fall into the previous buckets had grades that were good enough, all were top 5% of their HS classes. They were all great kids. Heck they were probably extremely well rounded, but unfortunately they weren't great at anything other than schoolwork.

Seems very unfair, until you think like the guy running a school, and you understand that schoolwork isn't the only thing that matters to a colleges success.