The overal trend data is indeed relevant and important to parents and students seeking to maximize their admissions chances to selective colleges.
Not only because trends are harbingers of future decision rules but also because of second order effects. For example, if GPA > class rank, then college prep high schools will face severe pressure to inflate grades, which only raises the GPA bar still higher, which leads to more gradeflation.
Which more or less explains what has happened over the last two decades. The average unweighted high school senior GPA nationwide is now 3.69, which is a joke. How can any college have a reasonable decision rule when every other kid in the nation has straight A’s?
Inevitably, the colleges will engage in pooling the applicants. As the Harvard trial shows, and multiple academic studies prior to the trial suggested, applicants are compared within their respective “pools,” or cohorts, not across them.
If only the adcoms would tell us how they pool and what the standard is for each of those applicant pools – GPA, test scores, “personal” ranking a la Harvard’s 1-6 scale, wealth threshold/EFC – then we could plan and prioritize appropriately.
Some are making small steps in this direction. UIUC for instance allows the prospective applicant to see 25-75th percentile SAT and ACT bands for admitted applicants by intended major, for all Arts & Sciences majors.
Let’s hope more transparency follows.