That was a clever little video, and not too long either. My sil said something similar to what she says near the end - don’t get too stuck on the questions that are being asked. There are the prompts (which you have to more or less answer), but much more important is the agenda (what you want the admissions office to think about you.) One poster said she thought it was helpful if you can summarize a kid in a couple of words. "Oh we have to admit the Russian speaking ballet dancer. (Who spent junior year of high school in Russia). Or “we have to admit the origami making historian”
I agree with the OP’s friend that it’s often easier to create a themed application - with the caveat that the theme really is you and that you aren’t leaving important desirable aspects of you out.
I’ll give you two examples:
Older son said basically "I’m a computer nerd. STEM kid. All his activities were related - Science Olympiad, Academic Team, lots of computer science work and volunteer experience outside school. All the major science and math APs plus some electives and beyond AP courses. The only non-science aspect of his application was his book-list for Harvard. (He read hundreds of books every year - none of it great literature, but lots and lots.) He got into Harvard and CMU (CS) with this approach, but not the other single digit acceptance schools he applied to - more techy places where his application may have seemed more run of the mill. (Or he just didn’t win the lottery!) He did show his sense of humor in his main essay, but it was never better than pretty good for an engineer.
Younger son, had no idea what he wanted to study, though he thought international relations looked interesting. His favorite courses in high school had been history and he’d really enjoyed family vacations overseas. (Not a lot of them, but a few.) In high school he’d started folding origami for fun, then started giving away origami earrings as inexpensive birthday presents, and eventually sold them through a local gallery. His ECs were Science Olympiad, literary magazine, and he was in two orchestras. He’d enjoyed a project cataloging neighborhood papers. He thought a lot about how he should present himself.
In the end he wrote his main essay about origami. He talked about the joy and frustrations of teaching yourself from Youtube videos, how serendipity can snowball into something bigger. But mostly he showed himself as curious, able to follow an interest, and his sense of humor. He wrote a second EC essay about that neighborhood project, describing what it is like to realize for the first time just how limited primary sources can sometimes be, as he only got one side of any story. He showed himself thinking like a historian, but never actually claimed to be one.
Finally, when Tufts had an optional essay to write an alternative history of the US. He went to town. He spent days looking up newspaper headlines that he could alter, used pieces of Franklin’s diary etc. He even asked how to write a headline in German. He showed both his creativity and his chops as a researcher. In the end there was a theme, though his activities were pretty disparate. (And notice he didn’t write about the orchestras, because while competent he’s not a musician.)