I don’t understand why you couldn’t include some passage from the novel or a short story or had some story published somewhere. If the novel was well written, wouldn’t you want to show it off? That is how I would think if I was in admissions. IMO it makes a bad impression when you don’t show any creative writing or any evidence anything was published anywhere.
Also, I didn’t realize you wrote an essay on shooting. That is definitely a mistake. It goes beyond listing shooting as an activity.
I don’t mean to offend, but if you want to know where you went wrong, that is my opinion that both essays were major mistakes.
Even though you did get accepted at good schools, it seems ridiculous that you didn’t get into some Ivies or whatever with those stats. Harvard used to have a “golden hundred” who were accepted strictly on academics, before they did their “holistic” admission. It seems like you should be in the top 100 nationally, at least in terms of test scores.
I am definitely not an expert on admissions, and this whole things seems puzzling.