I don’t think she needs packaging AT ALL. She can present herself as an authentic teenager- smart, hardworking, with a range of interests and skills, who at the advanced age of 17 doesn’t know what she wants to do when she gets out of college. Being authentic is SO RARE these days that she will automatically create her own “shortcut”.
I think you are making this unnecessarily complicated. She has disparate EC’s- terrific. She has many interests- terrific. She doesn’t need to fake her way through a “packaged persona” to end up in a great college where she can pursue these disparate interests.
It seems a form of packaging would arise naturally by matching colleges to the applicant. For example, schools such as Amherst, Smith, Hamilton and Grinnell are especially oriented toward students with diverse academic interests, such as those of your daughter.
It’s not an issue. Every school seeks different and you don’t know what they want.
Some need an Oboe player in the orchestra. Some need females in CS.
Some need non CS majors because those students are less and less.
The kid you described is going to have a zillion opportunities straight up with the right list of schools.
Authenticity is your best bet.
You are concerned that “ She has followed her passions, had a memorable and happy (knock-on-wood) high school experience so far, and now we are just wondering how best to present her to AOs. This is a little trickier than for my older kid, because D has passions that don’t as typically go hand-in-hand.”
Frankly you are over complicating a process where this is a strength already.
The student should be driving this - as she has what activities she’s taken. She should drive her essay.
What will happen here is you’ll direct and the student will get stressed - as you know app time is already stressful - and she can potentially shut down.
I know it’s not what you want to hear but AOs have limited time as you note and authenticity is real. They can likely smell anything else from a mile away.
And frankly the portfolio you presented is already so great at ANY kind of school.
I suggest letting your daughter lead and all will be fine.
First off, she needs to package herself, not you. Packaging herself seems pretty straightforward to me: She lists her interests in the activities section in order of what is most important to her. If there is something she does that requires extra explanation, she can use the additional information section on the Common App.
I am truly not seeing a problem. She seems like a student who has varied interests. That is a good thing. I suspect AO’s will like seeing an applicant who enjoys different activities. From your description, she sounds genuinely curious about a variety of things. I am betting she will click with a college and that will be that. Just tell her to be who she is and it will fall into place.
As many have said well already, authenticity is its own “packaging.” There are innumerable ways, often unpredictable, in which a combination of various interests will crystalize to form an impression.
My son, who’s starting college this Fall after a happy application process, had a similar mix. He’s a future Bio major—no maybe about it—yet he took the entire acting/play study sequence at his high school.: 4 years of it, and performed in and worked on productions too. Loved it (and other humanities areas).
He had a summer internship in a science program and did well, but (parental bragging here) he really shined as a presenter summing up his team’s work to a big audience at the end: confident, charming, funny, a good and dynamic explainer.
I’m certain that confidence etc. came from his comfort and experience performing. Audience members came up to him after and said “You should be on TV!”
And I’m also pretty sure the internship director must have commented on his talent in a supplemental rec letter. The point is that the packaging of disparate interests often arises spontaneously. It doesn’t have to be a heavy theme.
Yeah, not to be flippant, but I kind of feel among the things you really never have to apologize for are an interest in effective communication (visual, oral, or written), and an interest in technology. Those particular interests basically support every academic and professional field I know about.