In my experience of reading about people getting their admissions file, there is a pretty consistent theme of highly selective colleges caring way more about the personal side of things than people often expect, and less about various perceived imperfections. So I am not all that surprised at what you found (and for the record, it is not easy standing out personally).
Anyway, I’ve mentioned before my whole family really liked Carleton. Even though my S24 eventually chose WashU, it was close. Which is really quite similar to Emory versus Carleton, so I will be interested to see what happens!