Because plenty of kids just aren’t exposed to engineering soon enough to have strong ECs. Especially girls. Our school didn’t have a robotics program. She’s our first kid, We aren’t engineers and wouldn’t have known at the time where to look for engineering activities if she had asked. She didn’t ask. My D took a late interest in engineering. End of junior year, She had a 4.0 GPA and all the relevant high school coursework, and strong test scores. And a bunch of art and music ECs. And in college she blew the robotics kids out of the water. If some schools want to exclude her because she might not like engineering, and didn’t get interested soon enough, oh well. She went somewhere that wasn’t bothered by her lack of relevant ECs and she’s an engineer now. She does art for fun,
Nothing wrong with going in cold.