<p>If the alternative to holistic admissions is a strict by-the-numbers approach, I don’t see how that addresses the problem of rewarding grade inflation. It would only exacerbate it.</p>
<p>That’s what’s happened in law school admissions which by all accounts is now almost entirely numbers-driven, except at Yale and Stanford, and possibly to a lesser degree Harvard. Law school deans attribute it to the tyranny of the US News rankings; they carefully guard their GPA and LSAT medians because these factors weigh so heavily in the US News rankings, and the Dean can’t afford to be the one who allowed the school’s US News ranking to slip. So they will freely acknowledge that, other things equal, they’ll admit a 3.8 from East Podunk State over a 3.7 from Harvard. (Of course, other things are often not equal; most importantly, the Harvard applicant is much more likely to have a high LSAT score, which weighs even more heavily in law school rankings, but if the LSATs are both above or both below the school’s target median, the 3.8 will generally be chosen before the 3.7).</p>