@roycroftmom , if you look at the admissions statistics for the top 5 private schools in any large city in the country where super-educated, super-ambitious people congregate, you will see pretty much the same thing. It’s even more pronounced in NYC, where one is generally talking about money, not politics. Those schools do really well in elite college admissions in large part because they are fabulous educational institutions that select for students with high academic potential and then shape them into exactly what the elite colleges want to admit. They all probably get some sort of occasional celebrity/politician/billionaire boost, but that’s the frosting; there’s a lot of cake underneath.
They also get some legacy boost, too. But if you want to see how much (how little) legacy actually matters, go hang out at a school with dozens of legacies at all the HYPS colleges. The ones who actually get accepted are the ones who are superqualified.