itsover9thousand

Several thoughts:

1) Competitive people will meet whatever requirements you set for your college. If you want "interesting people" your prospective applicants will assuredly be competing over who can be the most "interesting".

2) The typical EC activities that make people "interesting" (orchestra, whatever) are actually quite ordinary. Most truly out-of-the-box things are beyond the understanding of adcoms. Will an adcom weight beating Battletoads without losing a life over your standard debate team accomplishment? I doubt the college would accept the former as legitimate, but as someone with experience in both areas I think the former would take a hell of a lot more dedication.

ECs are totally unobjective, and I really don't think they should be included in college applications at all. I am not exceptional--look into your average "What was your SAT score?" thread and most will be higher than mine. My objection to subjectivity in applications is that it twists applying to a college into a social game, and I don't think that's a good thing.

I think that the application process should be as objective (number-based) as possible and, if also possible (which is likely), automated (e.g. by computer) in their application process--no adcoms whatsoever. My ability to get into a college or not is totally independent from my stance on that. If other people have better stats than I do, in my opinion they deserve it more.

edit: If you want smart students to go to your college, testing for IQ in addition to SATs/APs would be a definite way to ensure that. People like me with lackluster IQs would get rejected all over the place, of course, but you'd easily be able to distinguish who is bright and who isn't. Personally, I think the only relevant materials to a college application are those that assist in predicting college grades, such as APs--the current SAT is not one of them.