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So absurd that college admissions care about your hobbies etc. If they want to receive public funding they should have to only consider academic performance, maybe with some weighting for life circumstances. Are we missing out on the most qualified mathematicians and doctors because they didn't attend volunteer programs and play sports?

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I think it's because at the top level, everyone already has perfect grades so schools need additional criteria to limit their selection pool.

They have perfect grades because of grade inflation. It's cruel that because the boundaries of what is tested have narrowed, those who wish to prove themselves must focus on perfection rather than mastery.

Then the grading system should be changed so it's not as easy to get perfect scores and a bunch of people aren't clustering at the top.

Somehow this is made to work in other countries. Many of them have competitive university entrance exams where people are ranked in order, and nobody or nearly nobody gets a perfect score.

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