Comment by bell-cot

From a number of "what people did, trying to get their kid into Harvard"-themed articles in the past few years, I think it's a pretty common belief that awesome athletic extracurriculars are a secret sauce.

Though I suspect that lizard-brain emotions play a bigger role. Both self-medication attempts to get success by proxy, and also visually demonstrating (to themselves and their peer parents) that their kid is a Success Story at something.