the biggest hook is athlete, as you potentially could bring in money to the school and you have someone on the inside (coach) working to get them in. And it’s not automatically URM, but family context as well, so a white person from a poor family in rural Ohio or Kentucky (as described in the excellent book “Hillbilly Elegy”) would have a similar hook. While income can’t be used, family situation - where they live, what kind of high school, the community is definitely looked at. Take Stanford, they know the bay area in and out, know that an Asian student with both parents working from a wealthy neighborhood is going to have more opportunities and do real well on standardized tests, there was a report saying that Asians need to outperform non-Asians by 140 points on the SATs (1600 scale) to be considered similar applicants. Stanford like other top schools want a diverse college with differing points expressed, and more reflect the general population. They want to provide economic mobility as I posted in another thread, as it’s been shown URMs need the brand and prestige of the top schools more than non-URMs. Anyway, a lot of issues, tough to summarize in a paragraph.
Also the students getting in are highly qualified, it’s not like someone with an ACT of 12 is getting in because of the hook.