Neither Harvard nor MIT represent "the very crust of talent" either.
DEI initiatives and legacy applicants make up a significant fraction of their admissions.
But it won't be because there's an "if (legacy_p) admit_chance++;" in their process.
* - https://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/just-to-be-clear-we-do...
Also, don't forget that Susan Hockfield never referred her dean of admissions at MIT to the attorney general's office to face prosecution on wire fraud charges after it was discovered that she had fabricated a medical degree from a medical school that she had never attended on her resume.
You have a much higher degree of faith in the ability for humans to cooperate and never defect than I do.
https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/07/mit-gets-a-140m-anonymous-...
has the same chances of being accepted to MIT as yours or mine, regardless of test scores, then "I've got some property overlooking South Beach down on Martha's Vineyard that I'd like to sell you," as Alan Dershowitz recently told a news reporter :)
Regarding your degree of faith in the ability of humans to cooperate without ever defecting, let me refer you to this aptly entitled book:
https://www.amazon.com/SuperCooperators-Altruism-Evolution-O...
How do you think Harvard and MIT helped Mr. Jeffrey Epstein evade prosecution on the child sex-trafficking charges for over thirty years?
Type into your favorite search engine: "Martin Nowak Jeffrey Epstein Alan Dershowitz and the legal definition of a Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organization" if you need a refresher.
And quite frankly, I could care less who MIT or Harvard accepts these days. Admission to these schools has become nothing more than a modern-day equivalent of the 'beauty pageants' of yesteryear ... for all of the nerdy teenagers who don't look good enough in a bathing suit for Mr. Epstein apparently:
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/fbi-want...