<p>Definitely headline inflation! Interestingly, another parent (who hasn’t gone through the college admissions process yet) cited this article, and was excitingly telling everyone that GPAs don’t matter anymore. I hadn’t seen this article yet, but told her that she was misinformed and the article wasn’t accurate. Based on our experience last year, and son applied to 16 colleges, most of which are highly selective, the main two things that matter are the numbers - GPA and test scores. If you make that cut, then the rest (essays, ECs, awards, etc), come into consideration.</p>