The other necessary boxes checked. These can’t be underestimated but if he gets the ecc endorsement from church leaders, seminary grad, good essays, a good amount of extra curricular activities and has had some good amount of volunteer and/or work hours, they should pretty much be guaranteed admission.

The problem is, how do you rank or objectively rate subjective data?

I remember having a discussion with Robert Millett about this when I was at BYU. He said that this is a very hard thing for the Church leadership to perfect. They don’t want just the “intellectually elite” like Harvard, they don’t want the financially elite like a “USC” but they want smart kids who are spiritual and committed to the mission of the church as well as extremely well rounded kids.

It would be interesting to put all the kids with >30 act. > 3.8 GPA and at least an endorsement from their church leader, seminary teacher and has some kind of minimum extra curricular activity and/or work experience and see how many people that adds up to be.

Then from there you start going down the list. I don’t think I would “expect” to get in with a GPA under 3.5 or 3.6, no matter what my other factors looked like. The same could be said of an ACT under say around 27. I think if you get in with a GPA under a 3.6 consider yourself very very lucky. If you get in with an ACT under a 27, consider your self very very lucky.