The essay and other resume artifacts can be crucial to gaining admission to your colleges of choice. Be aware that admissions teams are looking for notions of leadership, perseverance, integrity and maximization of opportunities available. Here are two articles that discuss the use of non-cognitive factors in the admission process:

• How We Separate Merit From Privilege 
• Noncognitive Measures Are 'Not a Magic Wand' 

Pitfalls exist, however, the further out university administrators stretch analysis of non-cognitive factors as tipping points in deciding who gets in and who is denied.

For example quantification of your perseverance is akin to assessing your beauty. Beauty historically has always been in the eye of the beholder. So, one person's opinion of what constitutes admirable perseverance is another person's vision of simple survival and not particularly meritorious. Writing, life was hard but I overcame sometimes wear thin after about the third stanza, especially if that is a foil to mask a low GPA and low test scores.

To distill that idea, the essay, resume and letter of recommendation rely on an emotional reaction to your efforts and accomplishments, however worthy they may have been.

Nonetheless, Nighthawks, this is how the game is trending. Now, more than ever, thinking about how you frame your accomplishments is paramount. In effect, your ACT/SAT is becoming a number, and what you did last summer is rising in importance.

Note that core high school GPA is still the best barometer of future academic success as it pertains to persistence into the college sophomore year, a significant benchmark. Work ethic can never be underestimated.

All that said, you need to know-either next year or for grad school- that at some point acceptance is going to take some crafty wordsmithing to tip the scales in your balance. The following article touches on this trend and you need to be aware of this.