<p>I <em>wish</em> I did a lot of these things, actually. But I didn’t know about any of those olympiads until late last year, and actually just learned about the Physics Team and Bio Olympiad (and the North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad…) from this thread. Also didn’t know SAT IIs existed until junior year. Took the SAT once June after junior year. Oh well. Still got into Harvard as a biology/chemistry intent. But to be honest, studying for these things would be a good idea, not to get into Harvard, but just because they would enrich your immersion in the sciences so much.</p>
<p>To put my own twist on the satire: Study your ass off for the PSAT. Try to aim for a perfect, so you can get into TASP or RSI (both of which I also found out about after the deadlines passed). These will boost your chances of admission significantly, and you’ll also get a neat semifinalist or higher ranking research project out of RSI for Intel/Siemens. Fringe benefit is you meet a lot of strange people who share your obsessions/interests.</p>