re: You be the admissions director

Yeah, the only elite school of which I am aware (and is regularly cited as such) that goes almost strictly by the numbers is Caltech. They don't care if your daddy is a billionaire nor do they care if your mama and you came in off the boat when you were 6 and she works 3 jobs to put food on the table.

Most other elite schools are interested in "making a class", with all that entails. I can see 1600 SATs getting rejected in that scenario.

1600 SAT, 4.0 GPA in a college preparatory curriculum? Somebody is going to have to give me specific examples of that because that surely would have made at least the local papers for that student.