Your comment made me wonder how deleterious it would be to a top university, say, Harvard, to add an extra student to each major track every semester that expre

Your comment made me wonder how deleterious it would be to a top university, say, Harvard, to add an extra student to each major track every semester that expressed a strong genuine desire to attend but could pass no admissions threshold. Lets say the costs were covered by me, personally. Would 50 majors * 8 semesters = 400 extra students† who didn't pass entrance muster really negatively effect the operation of the university or change existing student's access? Your point about gatekeeping of resources that don't cost anything (perhaps for prestige?) is very striking. † There are ~20k matriculating students at Harvard currently according to google so this increases the load by 2%. Also I totally made up the 50 major tracks figure. Just a guess.