@sattut My thinking was (and again I realize that it was very erroneous in retrospect) that the colleges were already buried in a deluge of things to read, and adding something that didn’t have a fancy credential attached to it like an award-winning research paper would only annoy them. I’d read too many stories about applicants going over the top with supplementary material, and I thought that my Common App essay alone, on the whole process of writing, would be sufficient. I realize that I overestimated the proof I thought I had. As for short stories and such–this book was the first work I’d ever done on my own; it was the only one until very recently; after applications were done.
As for shooting–I gave the colleges too much credit for being accepting of this kind of thing. They tell you to write about your passions; I wrote about a sport that’s no more dangerous than archery, and a damn sight less injurious than many mainstream sports. I wrote about something that brought me into orbit with the ROTC people I’d hardly ever interacted with before. For Amherst I might have gotten lucky with a reader who practiced skeet or target shooting in his spare time or was simply open-minded; for the UCs and Cooper Union, the readers might have been willing to overlook that perceived liability. As the evidence suggests, the others were probably much less forgiving.
Overall–with so many applicants competing for these spots, I believe that schools look for any weakness they can in your application to sieve you out ASAP and make their job easier. I unwittingly provided them with every one they needed: (perceived) lack of sociability, (perceived) danger with marksmanship, and so forth. The remaining stuff wasn’t strong enough (race, gender, geography, and income bracket all worked against me; high stats aren’t so unique with a legion of high-priced SAT and ACT tutors; I lacked national awards) to compensate for the weaknesses that I thought would be my selling points.
At any rate I hope that I have better results with grad school, if I decide to go there.