<p>… Depends on how good your supplement is! (Napoleon Dynamite-style drawings might not do the trick)!</p>
<p>Regarding Academic indices, I strongly doubt selective colleges actually use those. Once you are past a certain treshhold (and I think you can have exceptions, a C here and there, one messed up AP test, etc), it are the essays, recommendations, other unique aspects of your app that get you in or not. When a 2380-scoring, 4.0 GPA, physics olympiad-runner up gets rejected, its not because of the competition that cured cancer, but because he/she probably wrote generic essays, got generic recs etc, was a member in some generic clubs, etc. If I make a rough estimate here, I guess, maybe, 65/70 percent are realistically eligible for admission, of those, probably 80 percent of those applicants looks EXACTLY the same. Resume-like essays, or essays about how your dead, divorced dog learned you to appreciate diversity and inspired you to study hard blah, good grades, good SATs, couple of APs, member of the debating team, volunteered in a hospital, played a little tennis. Thats really good, and admirable, but it won’t make an adcom think: “Oh wait, there’s the [baseball/salsa/jazz/lobster fisher] kid, let’s admit him!”. It’s about making an impression and being yourself (so don’t try to create an artificial niche.). And just coming across as a nice, intelligent, interesting person, really.</p>
<p>I want to add, I think almost everyone has something memorable to write about, some circumstances etc. the problem is, we are all tempted to write and do (as for ECs) what we think adcoms want us to do. I mean, we aren’t exactly carbon copies of one another, so I am sure we can all think of something we like, some weird habit, event etc. that is also fun to write about for our essays, that will make you, dare I say it, unique. </p>
<p>(this is just my view btw, I am a international high school senior, so don’t place any value on my opinion whatsoever XD, (and my level of english for that matter))</p>
<p>the academic index calculator - one thing if school does not provide rank and you input your UW gpa you get much higher numbers than if you say input the rank – does not seem to make sense…</p>