my experience is that while GPA and test scores are a part of the picture, they're less definitive than parents and K-12 figures imagine them to be at selective institutions.

At the university level—particularly universities that are interested in producing the future's public and industry leaders—being an impressive person with the ability to succeed and lead, big picture, is more important than merely being a high-performing student. Now at this age, high grades and test scores certainly contribute to an overall impressive persona, since that's what people at this age have been working on most of their lives, but there's much more to the overall context than that.

Does the kid with the 4.0 and high test scores actually have a well-balanced transcript with substantive courses and a coherent body of work? Or is there a lot of filler or a scattershot approach? Do they have a productive life beyond the classroom? Does it consist primarily of school-opened avenues for achievement, or have they shown initiative and ability to start new things and find ways to contribute to society entirely independently? What are they saying they want to pursue at the university? Is it plausible given their previous history, or does it appear that they're naive and/or will have tons of catching up to do? Given their background and stated aims and major, will the department, faculty, and culture onsite be a good fit for them? Do we believe that this person will come to our institution, take charge of their education, then take charge of their career, and really contribute something to the community that we wouldn't otherwise have had? Or will they simply jump through the hoops placed before them and paint by numbers on the way to a perfect GPA and attendance record that manages nonetheless not to be indicative of future success in life, due to lack of initiative and independence? If we reserve dollars and a spot for them, are they actually likely to attend, or is this the 4.0/high test score student that has applied to every one of the top twenty universities, meaning that they'll likely get into five of them and there's a good chance that they can or will go elsewhere anyway?

In my experience, the truly impressive person, someone on their way to being "fully cooked" as a figure, even with somewhat lower scores in high school—who really wants to be at *one particular* institution for good, practical, sensible reasons—has at least as good a chance of admission vs. someone who can be described only as "the ideal high school student," i.e. easily lead but not necessarily easily a leader. And in general, admissions committees look favorably on students who are able to network, make connections, pull strings, get other figures on campus to advocate for them, keep making it back into the discussion somehow.

I've seen kids with a 3.0 and middling SAT scores get strong approvals and great offer packages despite published guidelines, i.e. "they're unusual, but we *have* to get this student here," based on the totality of their life and work thus far, because it was clear that school was merely one component in what was a larger picture of someone who was already personally driven toward goals that that they took very seriously, and who had achieved much in life already beyond their high school community. I've also seen a *a lot* of 4.0-5.0 near-perfect-SAT applications with a bunch of school-sponsored extracurriculars (president of X, on the Y council, member of school or organization Z) get stuck in the generically "typical good student" pile, which ends up being something like a lottery at the end because there are generally more of them than spaces available, and it's not entirely clear that they have considered things beyond "This is a really good school that my parents and teachers like, and I am a really good student that my parents and teachers like, so obviously it's a match made in heaven!"

And yes, athletic achievement, work ethic, and maturity are one genre of achievements that can in fact mitigate against lower GPA and test scores. This is not a scandal, it's by design—again, universities care about a lot more than just performance in the classroom, for obvious reasons. When these young people come to us, they are joining a very different community than the high school community—one that is also embedded in a non-school geographic community with a particular character. And when they leave us, they are going to join society writ large. Can they contribute to our community, and can we send them off into the world as someone who can better contribute to society than they could when they arrived?

Admissions is a far more complex and infuriating process than just GPA and standardized test scores, and it's also done (as is everything) with tremendous overload on the committee and almost no time to work with vs. the amount of labor needed to do it right. But the most impressive people (though not necessarily always the most impressive students) tend to achieve their aims—they know exactly what they *need* (not just want), they know just what they need to do to get there, very often they've made cordial or even substantive connections to department(s) and key individuals in those department(s) beforehand (you can think of D1 sports and recruiting as a subset of this phenomenon). In short, impressive individuals pound the pavement and do the work to make sure that the right stuff happens to take them where they want to go, and they have a detailed, specific, realistic picture of where they want to go.

Now I've never been involved with BYU in an admissions capacity (or indeed in any capacity), but if you really have no idea whether or not your good student is going to get into their "first choice," there is likely to be something of the lottery at work—they're a good student applying to good schools, but there are an awful lot of good students and good schools out there. At that point, it's just mix 'n' match.