<p>Lots of good suggestions here…I’ll give you the same advice I gave S1 a year ago. He did it his own way and is going to go for the top schools for grad school. My advice: Do something that underscores your passion for whatever it is that you want to do with your life. If you want to be an engineer, get involved with engineering. It is not ‘bad’ to be more academic, but you need to be focused so schools can see that it is not just another box to check…“I want to be a lawyer because they make lots of money”…does not flow as well as “I looked into the legal aspects of my non-profit and it really got me interested in the law. I did some help in a local free legal clinic to better understand how legal experts function…” or something like that. One year of a sport will not really show you have other interests. Ultimately, just be yourself and go to a school that celebrates and nurtures students like you. Don’t fit yourself to the artificial ‘you’ that the admissions people at XYZ University want you to be.</p>