I did this before magick, but yes there are many ways to go about this.
In addition to the grades and test score, you want to accumulate titles. Captain of sports team, President of club, community service leader, bla bla bla. If you don’t go to a boarding school or the like where 99.9% of the students go on to elite universities (I did not go to boarding school) (yes there is such a thing as an “elite elementary school”) (they cost a lot of money), then you basically just want to seem intelligent and that you take the initiative in leadership positions, especially leadership positions which are generally valued, like community service and sports, or maybe something like arts if you somehow have some title or another.
Just realize that the applications process is heavily automated and filtered. I’ve seen high schoolers’ resumes who were absurdly “better” than mine was, but it didn’t really matter. Why? Honestly who fucking knows. I was near top of my class with nearly a perfect test score and had a few titles. Everyone else was either similar in accomplishment or was vaping under a bridge all day every day.
To be clear, I was a horrendous student in high school, it was just a pathetically easy school by in large and no one else competed with me for the titles I had, which I also did basically zero work to hold.
What I’m saying is that there is so much bullshit around this, but if you have good enough grades, a good enough test score (preparation and multiple tries), and some titles, and you do things like visit the campus, have an interview (literally just having the interview is what does it), that’ll probably do it.
In case you are wondering, these universities with like 13% acceptance rates are usually a good idea to aim to get into, regardless of your life path. If you go into the corporate world, recruiters from The Companies only look at these schools. If you go into academia, it is unlikely that you will get into a Ph.D. program at one of these schools if you don’t go to one for undergrad, and if you don’t go to one for your Ph.D. then you’ll be adjunct at a community college if you’re lucky. Although I have not experienced the alternatives, it is extreme the difference in educational quality you will encounter, if you care about that sort of thing. It’s not so much the workload as it is the need for the university to maintain its brand and the types of people you will be around. You’d be surprised how many people don’t give a shit even in these places, but those who do can raise you to levels you never knew existed.
I can recommend some magick books if you want, but generally speaking - grades, test score, titles, visit the campus, do an interview. You can vape under the bridge so long as you have all that. If you can apply early, make a decision and do it.