I don't know the statistics on the importance of extracurricular activities and professionally edited (written?) essays for college admissions. But I do know from personal experience that helicopter parenting is not required for admission to a top tier university. In fact, it can be done with rather minimal parenting.

I don't remember the timeline exactly anymore, but for a significant period of high school I lived by myself. My father would come by once a week to take me to my music lesson and the grocery store. It's a rather odd sequence of events that lead to this situation, but in short, my parents were divorced when I was 10. My father was awarded custody because his father owned the house my family lived in. I was the youngest of 3 children, and by my Sophomore year my older siblings had graduated and moved out. I guess my father was anxious to get on with his life, because he started dating and moved in with his girlfriend, while I stayed in that house my grandfather owned... alone.

My parents did not:
Write my college essays.
Edit my college essays.
Read my college essays.
Enroll me in SAT prep.
Know when I took the SAT (which I took only once).
Advise me about extracurriculars.
Advise me about course selection.
Help me with my projects.
Help me with my homework.
Make sure I did my homework.
Make sure I even went to school.

I went anyway, and not because I liked it. I hated it, and I hated the privileged kids in the "advanced" courses I was in. I tried to avoid spending time with them as much as possible. I refused to join the the NHS. I refused to join the math club until I was kind of recruited in my senior year. I played one instrument, and not that well (budget cuts for music in the public schools took a number of years away from me and private lessons were my attempt to merely compensate for that). I never played a sport (couldn't get along with the kids who did).

I still got into my first choice, and went to the highest ranked college of anyone at my high school. (Lucky for me, that school gave me a big enough grant to actually make attendance possible.)

So who knows why I was accepted. I certainly had strong SAT scores, especially in math, but my GPA was barely top 10% and I had very few extracurriculars. Did the admissions officers recognize the clues of a bored (and frustrated) gifted student? Anything is possible I suppose. Except it's not possible that a schedule full of overwhelming extracurriculars is absolutely required for top tier college admissions. Kids shouldn't be busy 24 hours a day (unless they want to be). They should have some time of their own, to do whatever they want. I think most kids can be true to themselves, avoid activities they hate doing, and still have a bright future. Allowing this will probably lead for a better relationship with their parents, too. And in the end, what's more important than relationships?