People complaining about the fairness about legacies and donor children miss the point that these people are half the reasons people care about these top private schools.

If you want a meritocratic institution that is actually reasonably priced and provide great educations, then that's what a state school is for. Or like the few private institutions that are actually meritocratic (MIT, caltech)

Elite schools are for the children of elites who will inherit some amount of that power (political, wealth, ect) and for a small cream of normal people who have the iq, eq and luck to be chosen. The goal is to let these people mix. That way in 20 years after graduation when a brilliant mathematician has discovers a powerful algorithm that he has an inkling that it could apply to the stock market, he can phone up a college roommate that had an extremely wealthy dad in finance. The rich heir roommate can join and fund the venture that might billions on the stock market. Or the fact that an official in the state department went to college with the then daughter of South Africa's president, chances are that daughter still is influential. They can talk and maybe broker some aspect of foreign policy. They are finishing schools for the elite. Whether we like it or not, society's next generation of elite includes the most capable children of the current elite. Evn if those children are less capable than the most capable of the general populace, they stand to inherit quite a bit and they will have an outsized impact on the country and world. Their parent's and ancestors influence is important in their acceptance process because it's important in real life.

There is no real solution to this. There's a reason that despite America growing in pop insanely, foreign applications increasing exponentially, billions being donated to them and everyone going to college, these elite institutions have barely changed class sizes.

The exclusivity and mixing of the different types of people is a feature of these places. If you somehow get these top institutions to be more meritocraric like MIT or Caltech or increase overall student body size like ASU all that will happen is that individuals with power, wealth and influence will simply slowly coordinate to send their kids to different schools and soon enough those schools will face this scrutiny again.

Now I can understand that it is extremely unfair that when all our Supreme Court justices, significant numbers of national politicians, power brokers and many individuals with outsized influence come from a few institutions. If you are one of the many intelligent, hardworking and capable individuals who don't get in when others who are probably just as good as you might, it is extremely annoying. Their entire trajectory of life is changed because of luck that you didn't get. But sometime life is like that. College does not exist in a vacuum and just like most things in life, influence and wealth are powerful.

Those with power tend to want their descendants to have some of that at least and they will do what they can to perpetute that.

I want to say I'm not saying that this is perfect or even great. I'm just saying the way humans work and the way incentive structures are setup, this is how it is. To not mention this is to be ignorant. If you want to improve the status quo you need to acknowledge the reality of the situation and plan around this.

I did not attend one of these institutions for the record.