Rather than try to impress college admissions officers, aim to develop capabilities that will serve you well in college and more importantly in career. Think longer term than merely getting into college. In most first jobs post graduation from college, your alma mater, your major, your GPA, etc. becomes irrelevant within months if not weeks into that first job. On the job performance quickly trumps credentials once in your job. And post graduation jobs are not that far away for high school seniors. In many career fields, getting a substantive internship with a reputable company during college matters more than one’s major and GPA when applying for post graduation jobs. And once you earn such an internship, subsequent internships come more easily. And at some colleges for some employers, internship recruiting starts during the fall of freshman year. This is just a few months after high school graduation.
I mentored several high school students who were well prepared for their October internship interviewing as freshman, just 5 months after HS graduation. One got an internship lined up with Google during summer after freshman year and that led to a series of more substantive internships with Salesforce and IBM because she performed well during her first summer internship. And as many posters can attest, the capabilities you’ll need to exhibit during internships (reading political situations in organizations, tolerating ambiguity, collaborating across boundaries, managing bosses (also known as managing up), project management, adapting to corporate cultures) are usually only marginally related to academics.