Hi, I have a 4.6 weighted GPA, have run at 3 state championships for track, I’m part of the school newspaper, and in film festival. What else can I do to make myself stand out as an applicant to top 20 schools? I got a 1290 on PSAT in both my freshman and sophomore year. I’m only halfway through sophomore year.
New-ish user, but the story is that the top schools are looking for the “leaders in their fields”. No doubt this sounds a little cryptic, but it’s the answer I see here over and over. Figure out how to do this and you’re in.
In an odd way, it’s not even that important that you graduate, so long as you become successful and famous and that you went to their school. Think Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg - would Harvard admit them again even if they knew that they would dropout? Of course they would, if they also knew they would some day become successful and famous.
Your grades are in excellent shape! Since you’re only a sophomore, you have plenty of time to craft your college application. Maybe you could take challenging courses in the classes you’re really passionate about and try not to stretch yourself too thin with too much coursework. Maybe you could also start narrowing down your extracurricular focus and research unique opportunities in your passion (internships, programs, etc.). While many people end up becoming national champions, the majority of high schoolers do not, so focus on being true to yourself and enjoying your high school years! Hope that helps! 
Top gpa, state champion in track, excellent Board exams. Oh wait. That’s you!
Keep up the good work. Upping the sat or trying the act can help if a smidgen higher for Uber elite schools. Prep and study. Use Kahn academy.
But as is you would have boatloads of options if you keep up the good work and keep being a good kid.
No bad decisions! That can undermine everything.
One “oh no” can take away all your. “ataa boys/girls”
Daughter applied to twenty something schools from East coast to West, public and private. She got into all except one where she was waitlisted.
Note, we weren’t going for Ivy leagues, so this is more general advice than specific to that, but based on what the applications and interviews asked for, I’d recommend the following.
The common theme we saw over and over again on every application was leadership. It seemed every school gave some type of scholarship for it or put an emphasis on it. Lots of essay prompts asking to tell about how you are a leader in your community, school, etc. It also came up in every interview. Anything you can join where you can demonstrate leadership skills would be a plus. For example, one of the things we used was daughters heavy involvement with Girl Scouts as she mentors and helps lead meetings for the younger girls.
The second thing I’d recommend is something we wish we’d done differently. Make sure you have volunteer hours outside of school and extracurricular clubs. That was one area where we fell short. She had lots of volunteer hours that her high school counted towards her graduation requirement. However, some schools didn’t count those hours toward volunteer hours. If we used hours for clubs or to show leadership, then those hours didn’t really count toward volunteering, or if volunteering was done at school, it was considered by many colleges to be a normal part of participating in a class, clubs, or sports, so again it didn’t really count toward volunteer hours. At many schools you had to bullet point out activities with the number of hours per week listed, so if she listed Girl Scouts under the extra curriculars or leadership section and put 3 hrs/ week, she couldn’t put it under the volunteer section and vice versa. Hopefully, that makes sense. She could have used a few hours of volunteer work at somewhere not affiliated with her school or other groups she was involved in. That’s the one thing I would have had her do differently, but it wasn’t a big deal. Just my advice. Have at least one volunteer activity; something that’s separate from everything else.
The last thing I’d recommend is if you think you know what you’d like to major in try to get involved in anything you can related to that. Read up online, join clubs or summer camps, take college or online classes etc. Colleges want to see that you are seriously interested in your chosen field. We’ve had interviewers ask daughter questions about current research recently published in her field, specific career aspirations, what she’ll bring to the field, and what types of activities she’s already done in the field. Thank goodness she actually keeps up with current research publications. I didn’t even know she did that.
And understand that for the majority of universities, you just don’t need a special story. Be a good student, understand the money business (talk to your parents). Do stuff that lights your fire. Understand the limitations of your actual choices. Most kids don’t go to tippy top schools. The kids that do often have written their story well before now.
In addition to all of the things above: Just do something you really like to do. It doesn’t have to be related to the field you want to study in college. I spend a lot of time just tinkering with circuit boards and playing flight simulator games (think DCS, Microsoft Flight Sim X, IL-2) and it became a hobby I ended up mentioning in my Common App essay (hopefully my jargon didn’t scare the reader off… LOL); I’m attending a T20 this fall.
I’ve known people who get into Ivies on the basis of being super good at League of Legends (I think they were ranked around Diamond 2 or Diamond 1) and another who got into USC because he loved to DJ – a hobby he eventually took to local parties.
I suspect that the sheer quirk of these activities was a major factor that helped admissions committees remember them, but the underlying factor was that they absolutely LOVED what they did, and that naturally propelled them to the top because they invested time into their interests without hesitation → this made them stand out (this is similar to the “being leaders in their field” that damon30 mentioned). If you absolutely love running, then by all means continue it!
Check out “How to be a High School Superstar” by Cal Newport.
“The basic message of the book is this: Don’t wear yourself out taking as many classes as you can and being involved in every club and sport. Instead, leave yourself enough free time to explore your interests. Cultivate one interest and make it into something special that will make you stand out among the other applicants and get you into the toughest schools, even if your grades and scores aren’t stellar. Newport calls this the “relaxed superstar approach,” and he shows you how to really do this, breaking the process down into three principles, explained and illustrated with real life examples of students who got into top schools: (1) underscheduling—making sure you have copious amounts of free time to pursue interesting things, (2) focusing on one or two pursuits instead of trying to be a “jack of all trades,” and (3) innovation—developing an interesting and important activity or project in your area of interest. This fruit yielded by this strategy, an interesting life and real, meaningful achievements, is sure to help not only with college admissions, but getting a job, starting a business, or whatever your goals.”
http://www.examiner.com/review/be-a-relaxed-high-school-superstar