Great, honest-sounding description of this college application grind, doing things he wasn't interested in, and suggesting that most of the other mathletes also

Great, honest-sounding description of this college application grind, doing things he wasn't interested in, and suggesting that most of the other mathletes also weren't interested in math. Now that he's 15 years into a tech career, I'm wondering what he thinks if/when interviewing applicants, and sees or doesn't see similar grind on the resume. I imagine that some, if they got their position by virtue of the hoop-jumping grind, would think that the grind was positive signal for a candidate for that kind of position. But I don't know how common that belief is. Reason I'm wondering... The last time I did a call with a FAANG recruiter (for Staff/Principal SWE), they did something new, running down a long list of checkboxes, and asking me for each one whether I had it or not. Most of it sounded like college application fodder, like people get coached to do in affluent prep schools, including multiple checkboxes about mathlete competitions. Not something that I would've thought would still matter for someone with a big industry track record. Was gathering this college app grind data for experienced candidates a new thing, or have recruiters and resume-scanning software been filling out these properties of each candidate for a long time?