At elite schools, well-rounded is not the way to gain admission. Doing something really unusual gets the attention of admissions folks. Lots of ECs is not the way to go - just a few and win some national/international awards in those few is the way to go.
The essay about the volunteer trip to Africa that cost the parents an arm and a leg is not a good idea. Just Google bad college essay topics and this one comes up every time (as does scoring the winning goal essay).
While the pressure to take AP courses is not good for some kids, for others the rigor of the AP is the only way to go, because the alternative course is not good. Val lives in CA, where there are actually good CCs (and DE might be free for HS students). We live in PA, and my 11 year old might be bored by the local CC courses (and not because she is bright - the courses are that bad). We have some great local colleges, but they are private schools and do not give HS kids a tuition break.
There is no perfect metric for college admissions. You can change the standards, but kids will just game the new standards.
Perhaps if you made kids rank their top 5-6 schools (other applications would not be ranked, so the college would know they were not a top choice for the kid), and colleges saw that rank, then you wouldn't get top HS students employing a shotgun approach to college applications. Schools would know which qualified applicants really want to attend their school, and they could give those applications more weight,
Not sure how this works? So if 10,000 kids rank Yale 1st, Yale gives them more weight? And then the next choices drop them, since they are not first choice? There is a middle school situation in NYC and if you do not rank the one school 1st, you cannot go. It has become rank it first or you don't have a shot and so your second choice becomes your 5th, because the better school you ranked second, was ranked 1st by enough kids you don't have a shot.
