Caveat that this is California so God only knows what's going on out there, but...
While that's true, in my experience it's the kids that have "good not spectacular" SATs/grades that get pushed out. Not 1450 SAT, 4.2 GPA kids.
Even then, maybe you aren't getting into Stanford or Berkeley, but generally you'd easily get into state schools. You wouldn't be relegated to junior college even if your SATs were 1000 and GPA was 3.0. 1450/4.2? No chance I believe that kid could only get into junior college without another, unrevealed factor involved.
If this is real, my guess would be there's something going on that this kid did wrong, like missed deadlines or applied so late in the season that she was waitlisted. Or she has something bad on her record. Otherwise, there's no chance that say (to pick a California school semi at random) San Diego State wouldn't accept someone with those numbers.
