I don't think it's entirely that black and white. If an undergraduate degree from a tier 1 school didn't cost approx. a quarter of a million dollars, along with the fact that your "peers" with rich parents will have attended a private school + tutoring + usually had a decent home-life; these things stack up, you can't claim it's a level playing field. Of course you need to be smart to get there in the first place (in most cases). But it's a far cry from a pure meritocracy.