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I agree that what thx1138 has written is accurate. College admissions is best thought of as a game with hidden internal rules and intentionally vague public guidance. It is intentionally unfair, by design, because that's what the colleges believe is right.

The elite colleges will be happy to tell you that they value merit, but they won't mention that about half the class is admitted on much lower merit criteria. They will tell you their admit rate, but won't tell you that the admit rate for "unhooked" students (i.e. students that are not in one of the five well-known preference groups) is much lower than that.

Four of the well known hooks go by the acronym ADLC, which stands for:

* A: recruited Athlete
* D: child of major Donor
* L: Legacy, meaning child of alum
* C: Child of faculty

At Harvard, about 35% of the class fits into these 4 categories.

The last well-known preference category is known as URM, or under-represented minority.

Together these five hooked student categories make up more than 50% of the class, and students in these hooked categories get in at rates ranging from 5x to 40x more often than students that are unhooked.