@ucbalumnus Having served on an Adcom, I believe these students do come to this conclusion. Alas, the highly competitive universities have regional admissions counsellors. One of my jobs was to identify these schools so we could take such things into consideration. We did this in the same way as we “de-weighted” all GPAs. Our Admissions techs recalculated GPAs removing some courses (phys ed) and adding back in others as a matter of policy (music, art, independent study). I’m sure the same happens elsewhere.