The 6 Most Cliché Activities In Elite Admissions

The most selective colleges do not admit normal applicants; they admit exceptional applicants. And in order to be exceptional, students must first be an exception—or not like their other high-achieving peers, the vast majority of whom will be rejected by top colleges.In this episode, we cover six of the most common and cliché activities—sports, music, and more—that continue to fill the resumes of top college applicants, causing their applications to come across as bland, unremarkable, and easy for admissions officers at highly selective colleges to reject.——“The Game” is hosted by Sam Hassell and brought to you by Great Minds Advising.Great Minds Advising’s unique, hands-on mentorship program and its deep strategic insight into the application review process have earned the company a nation-leading track record of excellence, with 100% of its students gaining admission to a top-choice school in the 2025–26 application cycle.Its students have recently gained admission to Stanford, Princeton, Yale, Columbia, Penn, Brown, Dartmouth, Cornell, Duke, Georgetown, Vanderbilt, Johns Hopkins, Rice, Northwestern, UC-Berkeley, and WashU (among many others) and are admitted to the Ivy League at a rate 14x the national average (90% when applying early).Web: greatmindsadvising.comContact: greatmindsadvising.com/#contactNewsletter: greatmindsadvising.com/#newsletterEmail: [email protected]: facebook.com/GreatMindsAdvising/IG: instagram.com/greatmindsadvising