Dozens of students who come to us for help are already strong on paper, boasting good grades, good scores, and real accomplishments. We frequently work with seniors navigating waitlists, students who applied early and didn’t get the result they hoped for, and families trying to understand why an application that looked competitive didn’t land. One of the most common questions we hear from families is what top colleges look for in applicants. The answer is usually the same: when thinking about what top colleges look for, it’s not just impressive students that they want; it’s distinctive ones.
Here’s what that tends to mean in practice.
“Well-Rounded” Is a Myth: Depth > Breadth
The idea that top schools want students who do a little bit of everything is one of the most persistent misconceptions in college admissions. What top schools typically try to build is a well-rounded CLASS made up of students who each bring genuine depth in something specific. A well-rounded CLASS is not necessarily composed of well-rounded individual students, but rather, students with deep edges in some part of their applications helping them stand out from other applicants.
That might be a student who’s spent three years doing serious research, or one who built an organization from scratch, or one who’s competed nationally in a performing art or academic competition. These students don’t look alike on paper. But you can tell what they care about, and you can tell they’ve committed to it.
The practical implication: adding more activities junior year just to fill out a resume often backfires. Admissions officers read thousands of applications and are good at telling the difference between sustained genuine interest and last-minute resume-building.
What Top Colleges Look for Beyond Grades and Scores: Curiosity, Initiative, and a Coherent Story
Beyond grades and test scores (which mostly function as a floor, not a differentiator) admissions readers are generally trying to answer a few specific questions:
Is there a genuine intellectual curiosity here? Intellectual curiosity isn’t just defined by good grades, but rather, clear evidence of going beyond what was assigned. Independent projects impacting local communities, deep extracurricular involvement, meaningful engagement with ideas outside the classroom, and similar ideas help build a story of genuine intellectual curiosity.
Has this student shown real initiative? There’s a difference between joining an organization and helping expand, lead, or build one. Rather than simply doing what’s expected, admissions officers are often trying to assess whether students pursued a particular opportunity because they were genuinely compelled to.
Does this application tell a coherent story? Students whose activities, essays, and recommendations all point to the same clear picture of who they are tend to be far more memorable than students whose applications read like a catalog of discordant achievements.
On Test Scores
Test scores matter, but mostly as a threshold. Once a student is in the competitive range for their target schools, additional score improvement rarely changes outcomes. At top-20 schools the competitive SAT range is roughly 1450 to 1600, and the difference between a 1520 and a 1540 isn’t typically what determines admission. Once scores are in range, that time and energy is almost always better spent on the parts of the application that actually differentiate a student (i.e. extracurricular development, depth in community involvement, etc.).
Depth in Extracurriculars
One of the clearest patterns we see in successful applications is depth over breadth. This can look like a lot of things, including sustained research, a business or organization a student built, years of competitive involvement in a sport or art, meaningful clinical or community work, and many more. The specific activity matters less than the level of commitment and what it communicates about how the student spends their time and energy.
A student with three genuinely deep involvements is almost always more compelling than one with ten surface-level ones, because rather than counting activities, colleges are trying to understand who the student is.
When we work with students on extracurriculars, we encourage them to think in three “circles of impact.” Circle 1 is simply excelling at the initial organization or activity a student joins, i.e. the starting point where they’re learning and building foundational skills (for example, joining and excelling in a club like DECA). Circle 2 is where they take those learnings and apply them to their surrounding community or local area in a more independent way (i.e. taking learnings from DECA and using them to support local small businesses and/or non-profits). Circle 3 is where the impact becomes sustainable at a state or national scale. Most students typically reach Circle 1, but struggle to get to Circles 2 or 3, where clearer, independent value-adds to the local communities can be demonstrated much more clearly. Students who reach circles 2 or 3, even in just 1-2 extracurriculars, tend to stand out much more, as they’ve exemplified an ability to make an impact on those around them while just in high school.
The Unique Thread
One of the most important things a student can develop before writing a single word of their application is what we call their “unique thread,” a two to three sentence thesis that captures what makes them genuinely different from other applicants and what specific value-adds they bring that others may not.
The tricky part about the “unique thread” is that it can’t be forced. A unique thread that’s constructed purely for the application tends to feel hollow, and admissions officers can usually tell. The ones that resonate are the ones that emerge naturally from who the student actually is.
Given this, one exercise we’ve found surprisingly effective for students is spending just 2 minutes twice a day jotting down anything that feels unique about themselves in an ongoing thread (i.e. on the Notes app on iPhones), including unique thoughts, interests, achievements, involvements, observations, and truly anything else that comes to mind. After jotting down that unique note, we encourage students to spend the remaining ~1 minute of their time reflecting on WHY they felt that item deserved a spot on their unique thread list. Once students do this consistently over a few weeks or months, themes often start to emerge on their own. Those themes are almost always more authentic and more compelling than anything a student would have come up with by sitting down and trying to answer “what makes me special?” in just one sitting. From there, we can work with students to develop and deepen those themes in a way that runs consistently through their entire application.
The Common App Essay
Common App essays are consistently where we see the biggest gap between what students submit and what may actually work best to convey their story. Rather than simply weak writing, the most common issue actually tends to be essays that describe accomplishments, rather than revealing the person behind these accomplishments.
Admissions officers already have the activities list, so the Common App essay is one of few places in the application where a student can show something the rest of the application can’t: their voice, their perspective, and how they actually engage with the things they care about. The unique thread, once a student has found it, tends to be the best starting point for the essay, as it’s already quite specific. Essays that work well come from a place of authenticity, specificity, and honesty, and often start in the middle of something real rather than with a broad statement about goals or values detached from a student’s unique thread.
The “Why This School” Essay
The “Why This School” essay is one of the most underestimated parts of the process. A generic version that could have been written for any school can signal that a student hasn’t thought carefully about school fit, while a specific and genuine version that connects the student’s actual interests to something distinctive about that institution can make a real difference, especially at schools with strong academic cultures or particularly strong, innovative programs.
Reach Out!
If you’d like to talk through your student’s application strategy or get a sense of where their profile stands, we’re happy to chat! Feel free to reach out through the Summit Tutors contact page. You can also reach us by email at contact@summittutors.org, or by phone at (847) 512-7117.
Author Information
