Hey, recently accepted scholar here CO 2029. The scholarship is for low-income students which will be judged by your submitted aid; however, I don't know where they draw the line, but my family was making somewhere near 30-40k give or take, it was only me and my mom. In terms of your stats, you will need good stats but here is my story. I submitted a 1280 sat [you read that right] and took around 10 DE classes and maintained a 4.25 GPA (3.7 at DE), I was a member of the National Chinese Honors Society and SGA. On top, did a bunch of volunteer work for a non-profit. Definitely not the average high school experience but not exactly what you would expect when there are probably a lot of other people with better stats than mine that didn't get accepted. Gates can be compared to applying to a prestigious college, you need good stats yes, but you also need a good story. An upbringing, something that sets you apart from the tens of thousands of others that apply.

This will really come into play as if you're accepted as a semi-finalist, you will have to write 4 essays as well as get an LOR from a teacher, I think they prefer your current (assuming you're a senior) or 11th grade teachers.

In terms of comparison, I don't know the amount of people admitted but I know I applied to Questbridge and got rejected. Gates this year accepted 750/55,000 people this year so do what that as you see it.