<p>From what I have seen, Grades > ECs > Essays are weighed in that order. </p>
<p>"When I saw the extracurricular page on the CommonApp I nearly had a heart attack. There were seven or so empty field to enter activities and I had nearly nothing to speak of aside from my job in admissions. At this point I realized that there was no way for any university to verify my claims on the application, and so long as I legitimized my activities by writing earnest and passionate sounding essays about my fabricated experiences, there would be no way of telling that my activities were false. My one attendance at the Environmental Protection Society turned into “Executive Board Position, Organized blah blah blah…etc.”, and my acquaintance with an upperclassman involved with a professional engineering development organization became “Blah Representative for X Engineering Organization, planned blah blah blah activities…etc.”</p>
<p>A lot of people would have just stopped and left those spots blank.
Some other people would have filled them out.
But you not only filled them out, you even diversified them, environmental agency, engineering org. I don’t think they saw through anything, they probably viewed you as a well rounded student and that is why you got accepted. </p>