Or, as I prefer to consider it, not even "about themselves" so much as producing a believable facade for the rest of the world.
In order to get into a good school these days you have to spent all of your time doing things you have no interest in doing and you have to do them very well. Whether they mean anything to the student is completely irrelevant. If you can't win through your own effort, you have to cheat because victory here is critical to archive any kind of meaningful future.
Ideally, you have your parents fully supporting you and fully invested in making sure that no errors are committed because any deviation from the ideal will result in catastrophic failure (e.g. not getting into Harvard). You cannot be allowed to make mistakes or spend any time engaged in activities that are not relevant for the task at hand. If there are "holes" in your performance, you must be enabled by your parents, even if it means your parents are the ones actually completing the task and doing the work. Whether you learn anything or achieve anything using your own skill is not relevant. It's too competitive of an environment to make any mistakes at all. If you do make mistakes, they have to be covered up.
It is "all about you" because you have to prove that you *are* better than everyone else within the specific confines of what the college admissions people are looking for. You simply don't have time for anything other than activities whose sole purpose is to create the ideal college application.
You then repeat this same set of activities for graduate school.
Did I get this right?
Am I missing anything?
