Filter to your heart’s content. Get teachers to write a recommendation or five. But use it to filter out, rather than filter in. We are not at a stage where the talent pool is too thin to need to filter in.
Total red herring. Unbalanced in whose eyes? A twenty three year old Admin counselor’s? Who’s probably in her/his first job and is very likely to apply her own racial/ethnic biases to judge an applicant?