THIRD IN AN OCCASIONAL SERIES

Luna Yang felt too jittery to take the wheel herself, so she asked her mother to drive. She was going to Orono to meet with a woman who had graduated from MIT. The face-to-face conversation is recommended for students applying to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Luna was nervous. She wanted to shine.

As classical music played on the Honda Civic's radio, she tried to calm herself by concentrating on what she would say. "Who am I?" she thought. "How am I supposed to get across all the things I've done and why I deserve to go to MIT?"

Luna has stellar credentials. A senior at Wayzata High School, she was one of just six Minnesotans to get a perfect score on the SAT college entrance exam last spring. Her résumé sparkles with perfect grades, advanced classes, volunteer work and extracurricular activities.

Yet with competition for college as intense as it has ever been, even star students like Luna feel the pressure to market themselves.

Many seniors applying to college this fall and winter -- especially those applying to selective schools -- are spending hours talking with their counselors, polishing their résumés and essays, and figuring out how to highlight their best assets. They're looking for the strategy that will get them noticed in the huge crowd of applicants. Will they sell themselves as the first in their family to attend college? A star athlete? A great musician or writer?

Luna's Honda pulled up in front of the MIT alumna's house eight minutes early. Rather than lurk in the car, she walked to the front door and boldly rang the bell, trying to quell her jitters.

"I figured, just calm down and don't blubber on and get off topic," she said later. "I'm just going to present who I am and hope for the best."

Looking for an edge

At Edina High School, where most kids go on to college, counselor Mike Holbach says his job is to "help a kid present himself well."

He's honest with students and parents about how unpredictable selective schools can be. The Harvards of the world get so many excellent applicants, he said, that to get noticed a student has to have some kind of hook.

"It could be that he hits a golf ball 300 yards, or she's the best oboe player in the city," he said.

Martha Homer, a Minnesotan who is a senior admissions officer at Harvard, has spent 26 years reviewing applications from Minnesota students. About 23,000 students applied to enter Harvard this fall, and most of them met written requirements for admission. Only about one in nine was accepted. So what determined who got in and who didn't?

"We're looking for kids who have pursued their passion, whatever it is, and have become very good at it [while they've] been top-notch students," Homer said. "There are an awful lot of kids across the country that fit that outstanding profile."

Some college applicants angle for attention by shipping homemade sculptures and videotapes to college admissions offices, or plastering their applications with glitter or feathers. (Please don't, colleges say.)

But what about kids like Luna who have perfect SAT scores? She's savvy about the unpredictability of admissions decisions, and made sure that her applications highlight other attributes, like her determination to conquer shyness by joining debate and speech.

Even Harvard looks twice at students with perfect test scores who are school leaders, Homer said. But "there's no formula." Some years the football team needs a kicker, other years it doesn't. Everyone at Harvard lives on campus, so enrollment is limited by the size of residence halls.

At MIT, Dean of Admissions Marilee Jones said that roughly 95 percent of last year's 11,300 applicants qualified on paper to join the freshman class of 1,000. Clearly, something had to give. She looks for students who "are self-motivated, who are willing to take risks, who are willing to risk their ego and are OK with being wrong," she said.