Unless things have changed from the mid-1990's, it's never been that hard to get into an Ivy if you are in the 140ish+ I.Q. range (and used this ability in high school).
I think that things have changed a lot.
Last year ~35,000 students applied to Harvard and only ~2,100 were admitted.
The Ivies reject straight-A students and students with perfect SAT scores.
This page has admissions statistics for all the Ivies.
If you scroll down the page at the second link, you'll see how admissions statistics have changed in the last few years alone. For example, Harvard used to admit around 10% of its applicants, and now takes only around 6%. Cornell is down from 30% to 18%. Etc.
College admissions have become an arms race, with increasing students enrolling in SAT prep courses, seeking summer experiences for use as application essay fodder (as opposed to personal development or learning), and so on. I have actually seen advertisements for college essay writers (and PhD thesis researchers and writers) on craigslist. I flagged one of the ads, but craigslist didn't take it down. It's reasonably common.
Anecdote: someone in my family is very bright, had amazing scholarship offers for two good private colleges, graduated at the top of her class, had lots of extracurriculars and awards, and was admitted to exactly ONE Ivy out of five applications. And that was several years ago.
