I don’t think it will make that much difference in application process.
In 2018 academic admits accounted for 19.58%, compared to 47.02% that were automatic (Top 10%) of students admitted. If you look at total number of applicants academic admission accounted for 12.98% of all applicants.
And I think candidates with strong scores are going to be at the top of the holistic process anyway.
Considering many neighboring states offer Texas students with decent ACT/SAT scores the equivalent of in state tuition, because Texas has more high quality students than it has spaces for at TAMU and UT, I think there is a good chance that the elimination of the academic admit could result in less OOS admissions. My reasoning for this - say you have two students with the same test scores that in the past would have been academic admits. One from OOS is ranked 23% and comes from a HS that would not be considered high performing and has a couple AP classes - GPA is 3.4UW. Then you have someone from Texas, at a HS with 14 NMF. Ranked 28% with 9AP classes and 3.7UW GPA.
One thing I think we will eventually see TAMU going toward is admission based on major. The soft and hard skills needed for an engineer/artist/teacher/nurse/journalist are different. While there can be universal academic standards, other factors need to play into the admission decisions based on the field of study.