My take: I feel that for the majority of applicants (excluding those who have truly extraordinary stories/accomplishments outside of stats) gpa and mcat should be the primary metrics that applicants are evaluated on.

I say this because year after year applicants have had to stretch themselves thinner to accommodate all of the clinical hours, research, volunteering, etc expected by adcoms. Pushing how many activities and how many hours are deemed competitive into higher and higher levels will only require more applicants to take gap years and sacrifice essentially all of their time to fit in all the ECs. Not to mention that many of these things outside of a paid clinical or research role (if you’re lucky) will provide you money that many of us need to live off. Along with this, other than genuine clinical experience (CNA, PCT, or EMT) these activities do not provide much skill or knowledge necessary to become a great physician.

I would love to hear some other thoughts on this and I would love to hear if anyone has a counter to my claims.