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So the million dollar question is how to figure out what matters to the administrators?
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I think so. Almost every program I won had their own twist. Coke was extremely community service hours heavy (the average 2015 Scholar had around ~1200 hours in high school). GE-Reagan seemed to give heavy weight to kids involved in agricultural programs. AXA only wants students to talk about one thing they’ve done, and you sorta have to figure out how to explain what the motivation for your project was, etc, without making it sound like you’re talking about multiple activities.
Beyond this, Scholarship America and ISTS both have their own formats. I think it’s important to have both quantity and quality when filling out these apps; you’re unlikely to make the weed-out cuts if you can’t fill enough lines, but you’re unlikely to win if none of those many lines are personally meaningful to you. In short, be a jack of all trades and master of one.