I'm spending it making a pros and cons list for Yale, Harvard, Stanford, Full-ride Columbia, Chicago, and NYU, fully knowing it will soon become a useless file.
I graduated 2011. If you have a professor you liked, it doesn't hurt to try to ask them. Refresh their memory who you are. Maybe dig up an old essay you wrote in their class and include.
... subpar writing. A DS and optional essays are there to provide ... writing skills. Mediocre to poor optional essays are worse than none ... you forgot a major (but optional) component and the quality is ...
I think some of the ties in the T25 (2, 4, and 8, 20, 22) will disappear due to the hits that different schools had to take to their LSAT medians. I think Stanford and Berkeley both drop since they took hits across the board.
Yale/Stanford: the extra stuff matters a bit more than any other schools. At least that's the reputation they have.
The other 3 of the top 5 is primarily a numbers game.