Quality of extracurriculars (sports teams, music, arts, etc.) and how competitive are different academic related teams (Science Olympiad, Speech and Debate, etc.)

What kids learn through extracurriculars can be extremely enriching. I was a competitive debater in high school and traveled all over the US for tournaments, qualified and placed in Nationals for all years, learned how to do legal research on Lexisnexis and Westlaw, learned how to search for, read, and comprehend peer reviewed scholarly articles in a variety of databases, read the works many of contemporary thinkers Rawls, bel books, Derrida, Zizek, etc. that most students wouldn’t encounter until college. These all taught me much more valuable research, analytical, and writing skills than my AP Lang and Lit classes ever did. It made the transition to college level writing and research completely seamless.

One of my best friends was in the Chamber choir that performed at the Vatican and also at Carnegie Hall. Our district’s Science Olympiad team at both middle and high school levels regularly swept statewide competitions.

I would focus less on curriculum as long as class selection is “good enough” since you can always take extra online high school classes, extra community college classes, etc. to compensate for any shortcomings in the curriculum. It’s much harder to provide a wide variety of activities filled other other high achieving kids that can inspire your kid to try new things.

What I’d look for is consistent excellence of students in school supported activities that will give kids many chances to learn deeply and cultivate their interests/passions. Being surrounded by high achieving peers can really motivate your child to excel because it sets a higher minimum standard for everyone.

Look at the local newspaper. What are kids in the district achieving outside of class? Creating some useful nonprofits? Winning state or national competitions? Students don’t get admissions to the most selective schools on academics alone. Literally everyone applying to a T20 school can do the academic work. To differentiate themselves, they need to have a compelling personal story with outside activities or some kind of soft hook.