A room full of box checkers is also worse for education. I want to have classmates that are willing to question the teacher, classmates that will spend time thi

A room full of box checkers is also worse for education. I want to have classmates that are willing to question the teacher, classmates that will spend time thinking beyond a class instead of cramming every trivial detail for an A+, classmates that will choose their classes based on what sounds interesting to them and not only what would look best on their resume. These schools don't systematically reject all box checkers, it's just that there are so damn many of them the admit rate is going to be very low for box checkers if you want a class with diverse perspectives. I also don't think it's a binary property, and to some extent is a product of how one spins their application. This is definitely a downside of the current system. But there are fundamental, educational reasons to not want your entire class consisting of students that poured every waking hour of high school into gaming the college app.