<p>I'm a junior, but one of my friends colleagues is a senior applying to Stanford (rejected ED), MIT, and HYP. Me and my friends constantly give him a hard time about it, saying that all he has is grades and nothing else, which is mostly true. He is on a few academis teams, and has very good test scores, GPA, etc. Me, on the other hand, has an ACT score one point below his, my GPA is .04 below his, and he tells me I have no shot. I have taken advanced history and english courses all through high school, in addition to this kids only math and science AP/honors courses. Also, I am a top musician, play tennis (but not on the school team), and actually have a life outside of school. I play on applying to at least Princeton, I'm not sure about the others that this kid is applying to, but if you're an adcom officer, who would you take??</p>
<p>Adcoms like to see a well-rounded applicant. Grades and test scores are certainly important but they also like to see that you actually did something with your life while in high school. Universities look for an applicant who will bring something unique to their campus...so I would take the student who took a challenging course load, did well on tests and had meaningful participation in extracurriculars.</p>