Crimson expert and Former Harvard Admissions Officer, Devery, discussed what high school seniors should care about their application materials during the webinar.
The following article is the summary of her speaking:

What is Harvard looking for?
Harvard looks for a combination of leadership intellectual curiosity, creativity, initiative, commitment, and personal qualities.

Application Considerations
These are dimensions that college admissions officers look for application process:

1. Academics

• SAT or ACT
• AP/IB/A Levels/Rigorous Curriculum
• Academic Transcript/GPA 

2. Extracurricular and Leadership

• Depth
• Showing initiative
• Distinguished Excellence

3. Personal Qualities
4. Common App
5. Essays
6. Interview
7. Letters of Recommendation
 
Spotlight on Academics
So what specifically is important for academics? Devery demonstrated this issue from the following aspects:

Quality of transcript: that is to say, students should get good grades on their transcript for each academic course or predictions. Also it includes student's weighted or unweighted grade point average.

Curricular Rigor: curricular rigor relates to school offerings and pedagogy; How many “solids” and where is rigor concentrated?

Standardized Testing: although many school permit students to apply without ACT or SAT score for this pandemic time. Devery encouraged students to take it as a proof of his or her academic competent. Students can choose to take AP test as a supplement test.

Admissions officers will consider every aspect of a student's academic factor by looking at the school profile that each school submits. So take as many rigorous classes as possible in your school. Devery strongly recommended that students take additional AP courses! It is an incredible way to stand out and show intellectual vitality as a student, which is highly valued by admissions officers. 
 
Spotlight on Extracurriculars
Actually, Devery mentioned that 80% of the Harvard applicants are qualified academically, but what else? Applicants obviously need more to extinguish them from other applicant. Extracurricular activities counts, and more importantly, admissions officers look at qualities not quantities of student's activities.

So what kind of activities count? For the obvious ones, students can digger from their special talents and measure it from the depth of participation, or they can demonstrate their leadership and impact during these activities. For the "not-so-obvious" example, students can ask themselves these questions: What do I learn from the list? Are there natural tendencies? Am I an explorer, innovator, or committer?
 
Devery also mentioned that there was no requirements for what kind of extracurriculars students should take, but do their best on this part.
 
She then talked about what leadership looked like for the extracurricular activities. Examples include institutional/student body president, organization ambassador, club leader, and newspaper or yearbook editor.
 
There are also examples for innovative activities, like startup founder, organization director, leading a campaign, starting an app and starting a competition, etc.
 
The independent activities would include starting a successful blog, research, internships, writing a novel or marathon fundraiser.
 
For international students in school the majority of the day, she also mentioned, there are plenty of ways to build an extracurricular profile online. This is an ebook that Crimson provides that will help international students get started: https://pages.crimsoneducation.org/online-ecl-project
 
Then Devery talked about the impact of these activities. What does Impact look like?
If the activity happens in a school, the impact would be measured for the participants for this activity. For example,  starting a tutor club-30 tutors support 100 peers, raising 5,000 for recycling bins, proposing the school converts to solar energy…etc. 
 
The Rest of the application
The rest of the application are also very crucial for the application. They would reflect or show the applicants' personal characteristics, such as intellectual curiosity, personal background, and interpersonal skills.
 
What's more important is how you think of yourself, she said, your interests, creativity and civic engagement matters. Even your cultural perspective, context, institutional needs and family history matters. Your personality also counts. Admissions officers would think about what kind of person you are, you should at least show your kindness, humility, communication, and show that you can not only be a leader but also be a good coworker. 
 
When it comes to the personal statement, students should think about this question, suggested Devery, "Does the reader want to repeat my CV or should I share a story from my life?" She suggested students to pick 1-2 things that tie back to their narrative. Students should also keep in mind to tell who you are, not what admissions officers want you are.
 
Structure of the personal Essay
Devery finally talked about the structure of the personal essay.  The topic can be anything such as your habits, your personal preferences, your taste in food or fashion, or your unique style in clothes, did you dress up for exams...

These are the tips that Devery gave to all the applicants when they are working on their college essay: 
Tips
Which prompt excites you?
Which story adds new and personal information to the application
Which story feels honest and authentically you?
What do you want the reader to learn about you? What should their takeaways be?
Don’t…
Be overly dramatic
Positive spin
Focus the essay on the experiences of other—don’t make the reader want to admit your role model or grandparents instead of you
Leave reader with any big questions or unresolved issues
Relationship essays or immature topics
 
To sum up, admissions officers look for the overall components of an applicant from these aspects:

• Trend of academic excellence
• Engagement in meaningful activities
• Evidence of significant impact
• Clear love of learning
• Sparks of intellectual/academic interest(s)
• Interesting perspective
• Writing that is college ready
• Thoughtful/reflective writing

 
Admissions officers wish to find these positive personal characteristic from all these materials

• Self-awareness
• Willing to grow
• Looking for a challenge
• Overcoming barriers
• Creative
• Thinking/problem solving
• Social awareness
• Consideration of others
• Kindness
• Service oriented
• Committed
• passionate