The kid who merely has 1560 SAT and state violin awards won’t get into Harvard. The people running admissions for top-tier schools are looking for freshmen who

The kid who merely has 1560 SAT and state violin awards won’t get into Harvard. The people running admissions for top-tier schools are looking for freshmen who are “well-rounded” as well as smart, and they want a “diverse” student body as well. If you show up with exactly the same extracurricular activities on your resume that a thousand other pushed-to-overachieve seventeen-year-olds all over the country have, you are at a disadvantage.