No clue if this is even remotely true, but here is what I think: the most successful companies can basically pick and chose from a really large set of applicant

No clue if this is even remotely true, but here is what I think: the most successful companies can basically pick and chose from a really large set of applicants. Given this luxury, the can, in essence, filter by any kind of metric they want and still get loads of suitable people. I short: if you have a million applications you can sort by GPA and still have a hundred people to chose from. Sorting by GPA means you will overlook lots of raw talent, but who cares, there is still enough real talent in your funnel as well. For me, someone hiring for a way smaller and poorer company, this is actually good. These processes overlook lots of great people, which we can snag up. This observation is based on the behavior of big companies in Germany (think carmakers and similar), not sure how well it translates to the silicon valley situation, but seems similar.