Could this be any more condescending and meaningless?
You clearly know very little about the admissions process otherwise you wouldn’t have written half of that. Also, Class of '17? You haven’t even finished your freshmen year and profess to know about how/what people need to do to get into a school, that for many, is based on luck.
And no, I’m not “jaded” nor do I have some sort of irrational hatred for Harvard, my younger sibling is going there and we all think it’s a lovely school.
No one gets into a college with such a low acceptance rate as Harvard because they only had fun and were whatever your definition of interesting is. GPA and SAT are extremely important, the only reason that doesn’t get everyone in is because more people have those scores than there are spots in the school, so it has to be supplemented with ECs.