Univ of Chicago used to be a prestigious school ...
It still is, and its comparatively high admission/applicant rate is due to the fact that it has a reputation for being a very tough school to graduate from, unlike the others in its class.
SATs are a two-edged sword, having gone through SAT prep with my kids some years ago. The problem with the SAT is that the answers are often ambiguous and the "best" answer is often flat-out wrong.
The grading on the English essay part was based not upon good writing practices of our best writers, but upon whether you followed a rote writing standard for sentence and paragraph construction meaning that everything read like it was written by the local department of motor vehicles
Promotion based upon high SAT scores is a way to guarantee the dominance of high performing mediocrities, meaning that real leadership will come from the so-called second tier universities that have consequently taken prime position.
A Teddy Roosevelt could never get into Harvard today.