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It's true that the U.S. has a lot more arbitrary criteria, but purely having great exam scores is also a valid strategy. It's just extremely difficult.

If you have a 2400 on the SAT and a 4.0, but no extracurriculars or other redeeming qualities, you won't get in everywhere but you'll still get plenty of elite acceptances.

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There are more people with perfect scores than seats for them. The SAT iant a hard enough test to distinguish elite students -- it is a high school level math and English test.

> There are more people with perfect scores than seats for them.

Citation needed. Only a few thousand students score perfectly each year, and there are far more than a few thousand students accepted into elite universities each year.

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