<p>someone is doing an awful lot of cut and pastes of links-how annoying is that? Colleges know how rigorous you high school is. If 4.0 students from a school routinely have SATs in the 600’s (rather than 800) it says something about the school. So if you go to a school like that, with umpteen valedictorians and few scholars, you better have things that show you are a scholar-and just high scores won’t do it. National or international awards could do it. You would benefit from anything that shows that people outside your community have rated you as extraordinary in some area. A bunch of ECs won’t do it but national awards paired with the ECs might.</p>