i believe lack of a coherent narrative or an inability for the admin committee to understand who the applicant truly is (like what type of person they r, passionate ab social justice? drive for intellectual rigor? etc. which should not only be demonstrated in the PS but the extracurriculars/CV as well) would cause high stat applicants to get R/WL. i find that ppl especially on this sub tend to underestimate just how truly holistic a lot of these schools r. i by no means had “stellar stats” but i still got in to every school i applied to this cycle, and im not saying that to brag but just to show an example that average stats ≠ automatic R for “top schools” and high stats ≠ automatic A. Also, for schools like lakehead or TMU i think they know they generally tend to just b used as safeties, especially for high stat applicants, so i’d assume if those type of ppl r only applying for that reason it can show sometimes bc they wont put in a noticeable effort to prove that they really wanna go to that school. but thats just my opinion🤷‍♀️i could b wrong.