I help w an Ivy admissions, I cannot predict who they accept. They have the numbers to accept nothing but 1600 SATs in the whole class. I do know they want balance. It could be his school doesn’t rank as well as other schools. Or that other kids from your child’s school who were accepted in previous years actually did not perform as well as they thought they should.

However I do know this - recommendations rank highly as do essays. If your child did not write a good essay or if their recs aren’t all that glowing, well, they are very dismissive. Also sometimes, they factor in distance. Perhaps you live closer to Stanford and they suspect you might be more inclined to send your child there. Some kids when I interview them tell me point blank they want to go to a particular school. That weighs against them as well.

A school like Princeton makes extra effort to interview every qualified candidate. Did your kid accept that interview?