Careful, this isn't painting the proper picture, because you don't see where the rest of those top students go. Are there more Asians in the top 100 colleges in the US? I believe so.

The URM are 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. (Also at these colleges URMs are often from other countries where they were the top students. They're not all American in this chart.)

What you can disagree with is whether attending a diverse college (on ethnicity) is more enriching than otherwise. (I personally think it is more enriching to have that sort of diversity, but I can see the other pov)

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.

This is true of college as a whole (and there are a lot of other wealth related inequities), but actually not for affording it, once you get into Harvard. These schools in the graphic all have really amazing financial aid.

If your household income is <120k for instance, you go to Stanford for free if you get in, flat out.

You are a bit screwed if you're properly middle class in a HCOL area esp. if your parents recently had a salary bump, but that's definitely not the same as low income students.

What is fucked up, is that a lot of the URM students at these places themselves come from insane amounts of wealth. The cross sectional view of race and wealth is probably a very different picture.