My personal area of expertise is cognition and learning. One of the more interesting projects I have worked on was trying to figure out why demonstrably high-intelligence people underperform (often significantly) in medium-term high-stakes tasks (short answer is lack of motivation, poor strategies, and/or anxiety). I have also studied and done work on the performance of high-IQ individuals, and college admissions was definitely a sub-topic of this research and work.

As far as admissions matters, I have worked with and/or on admissions committees for two Ivies at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. I have never been an admissions officer myself (I am on a different career path), but I am really glad the people who do those jobs seem to love it -- it can be a surprisingly tough job.

A few comments:

- RE similar/boring resumes from Ivy students -- The dirty little secret is that only about 10-30% of Ivy grads actually stand out intellectually. The rest are very meh -- smart and often hardworking, but definitely meh. This doesn't change after they graduate. This may seem to conflict with other comments that I made in this thread, but it actually doesn't. There are a ton of Ivy students who are bringing other things to the table (e.g., recruited athlete, social capital, diversity metrics, etc.), so getting good grades and a good SAT score is enough to push them over the top. Said another way, they may not be interesting intellectually, but they are interesting in other ways that the school values.

- RE strong school crazy side project -- These are the people I love. The best part is that for the most part it doesn't really matter where they go to school -- they will be winners in life. Seek these people out as often as possible, and your life will be rich.

- RE recommended reading 1 -- I am slightly embarrassed to say that I am not up to date on recommended readings for parents since I basically "roll my own" research-backed plans at this point. That said, I can tell you some of the authors I have read who shaped my concepts of learning. I am a neo-Piagetian, so my bias will show in the following list of academic authors: Jerome Bruner, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Howard Gardner (be careful about derivative works by others -- they sometimes bastardize his original work), Robert Sternberg, Lev Vygotsky (usu. in summary... he wrote in Russian), David Perkins, Robert Kegan (esp. In Over Our Heads), Kurt Fischer (esp. Human Behavior...), Eleanor Duckworth, and Jean Piaget (seriously, just know the basic idea of stages of child development -- his ideas have been significantly refined over the past few decades). Just search Amazon for these authors, read the reviews, and pick one that sounds interesting. Most of the books are accessible for non-academics, but they are backed by solid research with accompanying solid research publications. Given that I have just given you a list of accessible graduate level readings...

- RE recommended reading 2 -- For high school students and soon-to-be college applicants, I have heard that Cal Newport's books are good. Note that I have not read them myself, but the comments on Amazon and various blurbs seem to show that he is on the right track. That said, I hope that he doesn't provide a formula ("just do these 15 steps to get into your dream school"), because a strict formula won't work since people and contexts can often be very different. I would hope that the main takeaways are abstracted one level so that they can be applied to a variety of contexts. Other than that, I don't have much for you.

- RE great memory -- I am curious about why your daughter memorized the periodic table. Was she encouraged to? Did she do it naturally? Is she normally encouraged to memorize things? Feats of memory often turn into a type of parlor game that young children can use to get positive feedback from adults, and it's an unfortunately easy crutch to lean on. If you are looking for a non-automaton, I would try to steer clear of heavily rewarding this behavior if at all possible. Specifically, let them know that it was a good job to memorize something, but that memorization needs to have a purpose. The big rewards should come with the higher-order thinking accomplishment that the memorization facilitated. That's just my opinion...

- RE general parenting -- Kids are intellectual sponges -- they are naturally born scientists, artists, and sociologists. The best thing you can do is facilitate their exploration and model best practices for them. Help them push their own intellectual boundaries in a relatively safe way (easy to say, hard to do -- short hint is to bring them back with a small success once they have hit cognitive break down). Model good processes for them -- for example, likes-dislikes-questions-improvements review process, revising (or refactoring code, or drafts for papers, or studies for art, or whatever similar concept that top performers do for revisions and development), etc. Modeling good empathy practices from a young age can reap huge dividends. I could go on......

- RE parenting media -- It's hard to do one-size-fits-all media on good parenting. As I mentioned before, people and contexts can vary widely. Another issue is that sometimes parents are bringing their own issues to the table, so seemingly good parenting advice can sometimes go sideways when interpreted through the parent(s) with issues. A top-notch parenting book would probably start with "make sure you have addressed all of your own major issues" and would lose a big chunk of their readership/market right there.

OK, wall of text achieved. I will stop here. Let me know if you have more questions, and we can touch base via other means.