I assume you’re talking about the process for small GA aircraft?
What about airlines? In real life, I believe your company dispatch will have a good idea on the arrival situation, but ultimately ATC is going to put you in a pattern amongst other traffic and vector you in or assign an approach and runway.
I suspect pilots don’t spend time looking at Stars, transitions and approaches and figuring out which one they want to fly. They are assigned to them. They enter them into the FMS, pull up the plate on their EFB and get to work flying it in (usually vectored by ATC for traffic separation).
I think those who fully plan an IFR flight with Navigraph or any other tool and then fly it, are not really simulating a real-world airliner flight. For a more realistic experience, do not enter an approach and wait to get it assigned upon arrival.