Yes, this is right. For one thing, it simply isn't possible to have truly "objective" criteria for admissions. If it were only based on standardized test scor

Yes, this is right. For one thing, it simply isn't possible to have truly "objective" criteria for admissions. If it were only based on standardized test scores, the bulk of the students that got in to the most elite schools would be ones who went to elite private high schools and perhaps had extra highly-paid tutoring or those who enjoyed the obsessive life-long dedication of a tiger-mom. That would skew the population to students from a narrow demographic along with a very small number of unicorns. Forget about late-bloomers, promising students that went to crappy high-schools, forget about making up for decades of exclusionary practices. And after all that, guess what, the children of the uber-rich would STILL get in because a pile of money big enough to pay for a building will ALWAYS bend reality. The most elite schools will always have their admissions under a magnifying glass, but there's a lot of excellent universities out there which offer a superb education and don't have outrageous admissions requirements. A student who got top-scores and excellent grades can still go to their pick of a large number of these other fine schools if they get rejected from Harvard/Yale/Princeton/Stanford/MIT/Caltech because of losing out to some intangible criteria.