What they say they do and what they actually do are two different things. A single allopathic school gets more applicants than all of the podiatry schools combined (applicants, not applications).
MCAT and GPA will always be the biggest factors. There are people with 4.0s and 35+ on the MCAT who get denied by medical schools because they neglect to do extra curriculars or are horrendous interviewers/not personable. There are a lot of applicants with high stats, so those adcoms need other variables to factor in. Podiatry school on the other hand is so non competitive that if you can feign interest in the field and have a 3.0 and 25 on the MCAT (read: mediocre stats) then you are in.
I personally think that medical school admissions throw out buzz words like "holistic application review" to encourage those with lower stats to apply. Mo apps mo money. On a less cynical note, some of those "underdog applicants" will make good docs and medical schools do want to ultimately produce good physicians. So they will look for diamonds in the rough, so to speak.
