Alongside high school transcript, essays, extracurricular activities, and demographics, yes. It's usually not a simple threshold or ranking, but it gives admiss

Alongside high school transcript, essays, extracurricular activities, and demographics, yes. It's usually not a simple threshold or ranking, but it gives admissions officers a normalized view of something approximating intellectual horsepower (rigor and quality of high schools varies enormously and mostly responds to socioeconomic status of the neighborhood). SAT and ACT each have a timed handwritten essay component, but it's not very well-regarded. There is no long-form working of problems, though that does appear on AP/IB subject tests which are also necessary to be competitive at highly selective schools.