What do you think was the single best thing that helped you get an appointment?
I know that I went to a good school and got better-than-average grades in honors/AP classes. I was in the 15th percentile of a class of 500. My athletics were average, just some low-level varsity track and XC.
Now my extracurriculars... the list is quite extensive, but i'm sure that's what got me in, if anything. I met the qualifications in all other areas, but if it wasnt for my large list of extracurricular I probably wouldn't be here today.
That being said: follow through. Don't join a lot of clubs, just to put them on a list. Be a leader. Commit. Don't take more than you can handle. For example, don't be a Boy Scout, Army Cadet, and CAP cadet, and merely be a low-level participant.
Be an Eagle Scout, or a platoon leader, or a Spaatz (Eaker, Earhart and Mitchell are all awesome, too!). Participate on a national level if you can. A good friend of mine missed getting into West Point in the last round of admissions for the class of 2016. In the end, he figured out that "he had his hands in too many cookie jars, and couldn't reach deep enough into any one of them to pull out a cookie."
Participating in too much, but doing too little, is as sure a way to kill your application's extracurricular as doing nothing at all (well, maybe not, but points-wise, it doesn't benefit you.)
