“elite college admissions (they already have all the networking/connections available to them with various doors legally opening to them), is in actuality creating an elite class that perpetually possesses the privileges. This is antithesis of American dream and is very detrimental to our social mobility.”
This is well said, but I’m not sure the US was built on elite colleges providing the social mobility and opportunities you mention, it’s more the public universities that do that for the majority of Americans.
"but Harvard legacy status was indeed a featherweight beyond that. "
It’s a lot more than featherweight, even Harvard concedes that, otherwise they would have objected to the data around legacies being presented, as others have noted. Legacy wasn’t actually the surprise, it was the SCEA advantage that I thought was zero to minimal, but not.
“The number is more than you might think.”
Yeah, add Tiffany Trump (Georgetown Law) and Audrey Pence (daughter, Harvard Law). But is it a lot, I mean if you have 50 admits, even 150 that are there because of what their parents did more than what they did, is it meaningful in a class of 2000 admits? Not sure.