[jeffreyrogers]

That's not really a fair comparison. The equivalent would be someone listing writing as an extracurricular activity and then you look and see what novels they've published, what anthologies their poetry has appeared in, whether they've written essays or journalism that got published in the New Yorker or a similar, high quality publication.

Again, I'm not sure what you're suggesting the OP do differently. It's not feasible for admissions directors to be experts in every area they're evaluating candidates on, so they have to outsource some of that to people who have already evaluated the candidates on those dimensions.

[jancsika]

Regardless of what you think the fair comparison is, it wouldn't be serious to claim that the writing is unremarkable without... reading the writing.

Same goes for playing an instrument. You have to listen to the applicant to know whether their playing is remarkable or not.

To be as clear as possible: OP should have reserved judgment on the musical prowess of the applicants instead of claiming all 600-1000 applicants were unremarkable players without having listened to them.

tldr; "I didn't see any musical accolades listed in their packets" != "unremarkable players."