> A 2019 National Bureau of Economic Research working paper by Peter Arcidiacono found that 43% of students admitted to Harvard College were either athletes, legacies, members of the "Dean's" or "Director's" lists of relations of donors or prominent figures
More than you think. Each high school, back in my day, have a quota that can get into Ivy League. They can’t accept everyone that is smart other else it will be in the tens of thousands. Every year, there would be 1-2 that go into even though they were borderline. They got in because their family donated a million dollar building. They didn’t even make it a secret. I went to an elite college prep school. The really smart ones I know got in through scholarships to help balance the scales. It’s just business at the end.
It's not an either/or. Very few people have the connections necessary to get into elite schools with, say, a 1.0 GPA in high school (or an equally terrible performance on whatever your preferred measure of merit is). But Harvard is filled with merely moderately above average legacies who would have otherwise ended up at a good state school or equivalent.
> A 2019 National Bureau of Economic Research working paper by Peter Arcidiacono found that 43% of students admitted to Harvard College were either athletes, legacies, members of the "Dean's" or "Director's" lists of relations of donors or prominent figures
So mostly all the white folk.