How good is published research? Could it be my no.1 extracurricular?

Title.
I want to know how good published research is.

I worked with a professor at Columbia University and was the co-author of a published paper that took nearly 2 years. (It was published at Wiley-Blackwell)

My other big EC’s are being a vice-president of Model UN for 4 years and the president of our SCI OLY team for 3 years but our SCI OLY team didn’t do anything impressive.

Would published research be better than those two?

I am in a similar position as you. As a rising senior, I also have a paper (Elsevier), president of the largest club in school, and did SCI OLY for few years. I am definitely putting publication before the other two because of the rarity and it relates to my potential major better. But I am also considering putting EC of “research” separately and before publication as it got me through science fair.

That’s sick.
I don’t think i’ll be putting research and publication as different EC’s though.
I know it’s pretty rare but do colleges find it more impressive than those other EC’s?

People on r/A2C say that publishing research isn’t that good because it requires privilege and connections and that’s why colleges don’t value it as much.

I mean putting beside college application, publishing a paper in high school is impressive on any level I think. As long as the professor you worked with is your parents or their friends, I don’t see any reason why it shows privilege. Sure it may be a opportunity not everyone get, but even working with a higher professional people takes incredible skills. For me, even though I did my research independently, I don’t loathe people who had professor advisory. Different fields require different environments. When it comes to EC order, I hear that EC that can be related to topics on essay and interest should be prioritized. So I am prioritizing publication.

Jeez, how do you even go about doing independent research in high school and then going to get it published. Is independent research worth it? How did you do in your science fair?

I was given first author by my professor and yeah we didn’t have any connection.

I was just lucky to find a field I understand and had interest in. Of course if wasn’t easy (actually the hardest and most time consuming activity), but it was worth it. Also, the field is engineering, so its not like I needed a lab.