Hardest deficiency to overcome in the App Cycle?

Two things that have kind of stood out to me listening to ADCOMs on this site and others I've known and talked to personally

1) For your generic 3.65/31 applicant, what we see in the re-applicant thread, listening to ADCOMs etc what dooms those who don't get in is often a lack of perspective, self awareness and foresight. Applying too top heavy. Thinking your LORs are golden when in reality they are the definition of average and not doing anything to help you. Lacking in key areas of an app like clinical experience. Incoherent essays that fail to get across the point you want(or don't have a point at all). I think in particular mimelim's post about LOR's is a really good read.

2)The key question you'll always hear ADCOMs talk about, both on this site and in my experience off of it, is what's your main selling point? Why should an ADCOM vouch for you? The problems often start for the unsuccessful when they can't really answer this question that well. The story behind you, your ECs(even if they are the rather generic pre-med type) and how you portray your background are basically the tools we all use to try to sell an ADCOM we are the one they should fight for out of a group of average applicants. If that story isn't coherent, or in many cases non-existent and not even considered, well you can see how that can cripple the best of applicants, nonetheless the average ones.

We can talk about numbers all we want. And we all know the importance of LizzyM scores and the weight they are given. But plenty of 3.65/32 applicants get in each year, many of whom without some crazy story or circumstances. Hell, more 3.45/31 applicants get in each year than SDN tends to think. There's a point where it's more than the numbers and when you see how many "average" applicants with 3.7/30's or whatever you want to call "average" get in each year, I have a hard time making the LizzyM score the primary culprit for that "average pre-med" 3.7/30 who doesn't get accepted.

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Hardest deficiency to overcome in the App Cycle?