My next two cents (I think I am at four now) is the data that came out of the Harvard admissions lawsuit showed that a lot of their admits were actually just normally outstanding high school students.
The puzzle has long been how schools like Harvard select which fraction of such applicants to admit, and it turns out that was not usually on the basis of the applicant having more/better academic qualifications, awards, or so on than the other outstanding applicants. A few got admitted that way, but not many–something like around 10% of unhooked admits.
So how did the other 90% or so of normally outstanding admits get selected? By having a very good personal score, rather than a merely generally positive personal score.
OK, so good news and bad news. Good news, you don’t need a “spike”, if that means something beyond just the sorts of things normally outstanding high school students do.
Bad news, Harvard and its peers grade your personality/fit, and that is a daunting prospect for many.
Still, it means you can feel free to take a shot. And it means the admissions officers who advise you to try to just let your true, interesting, human kid self shine through your application are not lying. They see a gazillion impressive kids. They are looking for kids who are impressive, but also who they can really imagine being valued by their fellow students. So, let them see you, and then you can see what happens.