You guessed wrong. I am saying that academic merit is only part of the process. Extracurriculars, interests, talents, and other things can legitimately be factored.
I attended and graduated from a private, Jesuit, all-scholarship, hyper-competitive high school in NYC. The first part of the evaluation was a special standardized entrance exam they hosted. Then they interviewed many candidates, and then evaluated a wide variety of info on each applicant to come to their final class.
Many talented people were rejected. The evaluation process involves much more than academic merit and test scores.
This has nothing at all to do with legacies.
But those things are merit-based. You can develop interests and talents regardless of your race or parents. It is a far cry from excluding someone from school based on skin color.
The issue is moot though because we both know that a lot of colleges are going to figure ways to use these rules to discriminate by race. The only way to stop it is to get rid of public funding of schools.
Regis?