Deciding what NOT to include is its own skill

Most advice here (rightly) focuses on what to include and how to strengthen it. Less discussed: I had to actively cut a fair amount of material that I'd gathered but that didn't actually serve the case, and deciding what to leave out took real deliberation. Specific example: I had a genuinely nice, but ultimately minor, local award that I initially included because it felt wrong to leave out something positive. On reflection, and after a conversation with someone further along in this community, I pulled it — it was weak enough on the "nationally or internationally recognized" standard that including it risked making my strongest awards look like they were padded out with weaker company, rather than making my case look more complete. The mental shift that helped: stop thinking of the file as "everything positive about me" and start thinking of it as "the tightest possible argument for each specific criterion." Weak evidence next to strong evidence doesn't average out — it can actually undercut the strong evidence by association.