I'm not entirely certain that specific USMA or USAFA standards are relevant here. The academies are not in lockstep on a lot of matters: requiring nominations, PFE vs CFA, color blindness standards and who knows what else. Senior site members can speak up with more details, but the RAND report was about West Point (and a long time ago), and WCS is not from New London.
Take a good look at this presentation to the Admissions Partners this fall:
It contains a ton of information, ranging from a very specific enforcement of the minimum height requirement this year to the specific numbers they expect to allocate in each stage of the process to a bunch of boilerplate from last year's slide deck. There are a few very specific things to note.
- There is no mention of class rank anywhere in this, verbally or on the slides.
- For testing they say you cannot have any testing accommodations and the writing sections are optional. But they do not mention individual sections of the ACT, and for the SAT they mention Critical Reading and Math. However in the class profile section they do provide scores from other sections.
- In the 2018 version of this he used the same slide from 13:00 and actually said "These are listed in order of significance" and then shows academics (Grades, test scores, stem classes) followed by leadership, then extra-curriculars, then essays, then letters of rec and PFE.
- There is also a slide titled Application Hints at 26:30. These include Use the blank space, Know your admissions officer, Provide monthly updates, Visit, and then a few others. Lots of interesting examples (You say you want to fly, but what frame, what mission? How have you aligned your schooling to achieve this?) and how they watch to see who is driving the process (student or kid).
- In the Q&A he mentions that as soon as the app has the transcript and a test score, and they meet a minimum standard, the app is flagged and the DODMERB exam notification is sent.
Anyway, I am not as confident that many of the things mentioned above are entirely true at CGA. Maybe reach out to Objee for some clarification.
EDIT: I'm sure there is a certain amount of other work that goes into evaluating school quality and the like, but from the perspective of things applicants can affect there are some items that are clearly not part of the criteria.