Since you are targeting econ/business major, you are better off spending time doing ecs showcasing the “soft skills” needed to succeed in business. Academic rigor in STEM looks already good enough. Maybe courses in communication (oral and verbal), culture, history might help.
I think, one way to look at it is:
Maybe ideally the biggest brains, but NOT at all cost! Some people might excel academically, with the emotional support from home, but have other issues. In that case, having a well-rounded person with a “big enough” brain might actually do better in a drastically different setting for four years, that is no longer the cozy high-school at home with teacher’s being vested in their top students.
It’s a little bit like choosing your friends circle - maybe there are some ideal criteria “on paper”, but the person sharing every single interest with you, even loves the same food, music and movies, might still not be the “best fit”.
Colleges often try to “assemble” a class that checks off quite a number of different boxes, such as gender balance, diversity, foreign students, various U.S. regions, disadvantaged, first-generation, etc.
Having the most rigor, being in the top decile, and having a strong GPA will certainly up your odds – still none of those metrics provide any certainty.
To enhance the overall picture, having shown commitment to whatever extracurricular cause over a few years, and growing your participation, can help demonstrate that you cannot just “consume” knowledge presented to you - but that you have initiative and can pursue interests that are not readily placed in your lap.
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If you are looking for the counselor’s indication of “most demanding” course selection and “one of the top few” in academic strength, you may want to ask your counselor how your course selection will affect that. What your counselor’s criteria for these may not be what you are assuming.
To be brutally honest and frankly a bit paranoid, I do not trust my counselor.
For reasons that have nothing to do with me personally or academically and mostly have to do with the parents of my nearest peers at school, I expect any recommendation I get from my HS to be filled with faint praises. I may be wrong, but I think my achievements will have to speak for themselves. Something like res ipsa loquitur, I suppose.
But why would you not ask your counselor? You may get some additional useful information. Right now, you just have paranoid speculation.
Unless the GC knows you very well and can speak of you on a more personal level, GC recommendations aren’t that useful. The main purpose of their rec is to show you in the context of your school.
What I tell people looking at advanced Data Science degrees is that using fancy tech to find answers isn’t what’s going to make you successful, it’s knowing how to ask good questions in the first place.
The same thing kind of applies here to academic-first brainiacs who might not have the life experiences to ask good questions or understand broader contexts. Ideally your best candidate is both brilliant and worldly, but for some employers the value of brains over experience is not a slam dunk.
Over-simplistic caricatures are rarely accurate, so take this with a grain of salt, but “schools not wanting kids with brains” is utterly one such characterization. Look for nuance.
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I had already abandoned this thread, as it has drifted far from my original question.
However, if you think my position is “schools not wanting kids with brains”, then you should take your own advice and rethink your “over-simplistic caricature”. Such caricatures are, as you noted, rarely accurate.
So on that 
…
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