That's simply not true. Like the sheer amount of money these institutions have, you think you can bribe them with 1 or 2 million, or even 10 or 20 mil? Please.

Also the folks who work in admissions aren't at all the folks who work with the endowment.

The kind of wealth that can buy a Harvard seat can get in on soft power -- being a senator or a billionaire, and there aren't really a lot of those types. And tbh, that's not 100% a bad thing -- though I also can't defend the policy entirely. Because the reason Harvard is the ticket to a stable income and good life if you're from a lower class background is in a large part the connections you make there -- which involves meeting these types of rich kids.

As an aside, the competitive piece is why the URM component is larger in the final admissions. They're not being cut slack and let in because they're URM. There are just a lot of qualified kids. You could admit three times as many without lowering standards. And that means you can afford to optimize for diversity, to make the experience more enriching for the kids that attend.