If I were in charge of everything–well, that would be terrible. But one of the things I would be doing in this space is working toward a sort of Net Price Calculator but for Initial Review.
Basically, colleges would be required to provide an automated Initial Review of an application, using the automated tools they are already using (or soon will be). The output would not be any sort of guarantee of admissions (or rejection), but could be something as simple as “deemed competitive” or “deemed not competitive”. The understanding would be that just being deemed competitive only meant you would get a serious human review. Deemed not competitive would mean at most you would get a quick look human review, but absent exceptional circumstances you would not get a serious human review.
I actually think if this was forced on colleges, they wouldn’t really mind after long, or not most of them. Obviously it would cut down on uncompetitive applications they have to wade through, but it could also increase applications among certain sorts of potential applicants who may not realize they actually are competitive.
Anyway, this is just a thought experiment, no one is likely to go for this (not soon, anyway). But point is I agree with you that since we know all this is happening behind the scenes, at a certain point it seems like giving prospective applicants a chance to see how that might apply to them before actually applying could be a good idea.