I call BS of what OP wrote. If one only has 2250 + “interesting” to speak of without any hooks, it’s worse than a crap shot. All that does is padding the school’s selectivity.
All of those top schools have allocations. There are allocations for people with national level awards/recognitions in humanities, science, engineering. There is allocation for atheletes. There is allocation for URM. There is allocation for potential donors and influential alumni. There is allocation for government officials, both domestic and foreign. There is allocation for various strong ECs, and yes, there probably is even allocation for pure “interesting” too for diversity purpose as OP classifies himself, just like US government provides an immigration lottery. But even that “interesting” category, a lot of times it’s used as a cover to take people with strong connections.
Finally how many of the 30k+ applications fall into each category? For the vast majority without national level awards or other hooks, they are all trying to be interesting and vying for the “interesting” pool because I would classify most EC without strong results into “interesting” since it’s difficult to compare one against another. OP may have gotten in last year, but I would say that’s the lowest probability pool. Just because OP hits the lottory once, doesn’t mean he’s going to hit it if he tries again. It’s like a lottery winner advising other people to buy lottery tickets as the best way to get rich.
I know a few kids getting into HYPS. While they are all normal and rounded and have high scores, none of them is exceptionally interesting. Most of all, they all have strong national level recognitions to speak of.