At the Ivies, you've got piles of white and Asian kids with perfect scores on the SAT, 4.0+ GPAs, etc. So you've got to do something to separate yourself from

At the Ivies, you've got piles of white and Asian kids with perfect scores on the SAT, 4.0+ GPAs, etc. So you've got to do something to separate yourself from that herd in some way or another that catches the eye of somebody in the admissions office or otherwise ticks enough boxes on whatever rubric they are using this week. Competition for some of these places is completely insane. I remember the campus newspaper publishing admissions statistics and it was something like 8-9% of applications were accepted, at one of the smaller and less well-known ones. Of those, you have a few dozen with the same last names as buildings on campus, a couple hundred international students paying every dime, and maybe another hundred recruited athletes. They could admit an entire class of high school valedictorians and salutatorians if they felt like it.