"The solution is to focus on similarities instead of differences."
Disagree. OP: Focus on what makes you unique. And that probably isn't the obvious stuff. You're in school, surrounded by folks whose talent is that they're good in school. That's not what makes most successful folks successful in life, I can assure you. Or happy.
Maybe you're just natively a generalist and surrounded by folks happy to be specialists. That's great: the world spins because of folks who see the big picture and understand how to connect lessons learned from disparate fields.
How about this: Read Andrew Hargadon's book, "How Breakthroughs Happen"... and then maybe Be That Guy, the one who builds teams and connects networks of experts and puts the whole thing together and makes shit HAPPEN.
School's a terrible place for learning this about yourself, since it's a reproductive mechanism for academics. But today t's pretty instrumental in gaining the necessary credentials and pedigrees. Do your best, but take this as an opportunity to learn about yourself and your broader capabilities.
There are always multiple ways to tackle a problem. Both ways help. However I do not find it useful to start out with your approach, because it is more complicated, takes more action and is hard to communicate, especially in the context of a single post.
The whole hiring process is broken. The recent trend is to put a firebreak of "recruiters" between the company and the jobseekers. These folks know shockingly little. But, descended as they are from bridge-trolls and meter-maids, they are happy to get in the way and throw their puny weight around.
No one is served by this approach but the recruiter fraternity.
