You have to be the best of the best. Not quite. You have to be the diverse of the best (if I may mutilate English to make my point). Horror stories come out

You have to be the best of the best. Not quite. You have to be the diverse of the best (if I may mutilate English to make my point). Horror stories come out every year of the kid with perfect test scores and GPA who gets rejected from [insert prestigious school here]. It's not enough (and rightly so) to be the best of the best. You've got to have something different. Some distinguishing factors that come to mind are: * Socio-economic background * Athletic and musical ability * Ethnicity and gender * Unusual, proven talent in some rare area