<p>Hmmm. I don’t know that I agree (except for the interview part). If the HS is well-known to Yale, and a teacher who has been at that school for a long time says “this is the most extraordinary student I’ve ever had”, or words to that effect, I think it can count for a lot. I also think that really good essays can definitely help the application. I base this both on my D (who didn’t have exceptional EC’s, and all were school-related) and on her classmates who were admitted to HYP. They all had the grades and scores, of course. A couple were athletes, but the rest were just really, really smart, well-rounded kids, the kind who are ‘crap-shoot’ admits. None of them had written a novel, won Intel, or started an AIDS clinic in Africa. I’ve got to believe that their recs and essays carried a fair amount of weight in the process.</p>