This article (and I) wasn’t talking about median income. At any of the schools you just named, a significant donation means your child is attending. How do you think they afford to give scholarships to so many students?

The article and the quote you reference, says that competition for placement is "notoriously cutthroat" and the rich often buy their way in because placement is so limited.

That isn't the case in the US among most of the top 25 or top 50 schools. You can buy your way in to some of those schools, for most of them you do not have to. That's the fundamental difference. The top 50 US schools overwhelmingly consist of middle class and middle-upper class students.

Ok, you don’t have to buy your way in. But being ranked 300 in median family income out of 3000 universities isn’t exactly encouraging. Even at the schools you mentioned, most students still come from the top 20%, save UCLA and Florida, with 48%.

It means to hit the median family income at those universities you have to come from the top edge of the middle class at least, that is true. That's not very surprising given we're talking about the median at very highly ranked schools. It's moving the goal posts quite a bit given the difference vs the elite rich having to buy their way in due to scarcity.

If you want to dramatically improve your odds of family success in the US, you want to roughly be in the top half of the middle class bracket or above. At least based on school access.

A lot of the top 50 universities do as well or better at accepting bottom 20% income bracket students, as second tier schools do. For reference, share of students coming from the bottom 20% income bracket (ie poor):

UCLA 8.3%; UC Berkely 7.3%; MIT 6.2%; NYU 6.1%; Florida 6%; Chicago 5.5%; Columbia 5.1%; Rice 4.9%; USC 4.9%; Harvard 4.5%; Boston U 4.2%; Brown 4.1%; Stanford 4%; Carnegie Mellon 4%; Duke 3.9%; Tulane 3.9%; Northwestern 3.7%; Michigan 3.6%

Lower ranked schools (but still top ~15%):

Rutgers 6.8%; Illinois 6.1%; Texas 6%; UMass 5.8%; Florida St 5.3%; Michigan St 5%; Oklahoma 5%; Ohio St 5%; Oregon 4.7%; Georgia Tech 4.6%; Oklahoma St 4.4%; Oregon St 4.3%; NC State 4.3%; Texas Tech 4.1%; Washington St 4%; Arkanas 4%; Texas A&M 4%; Alabama 4%; Pitt 3.7%; Minnesota 3.5%; Kansas 3.2%; Kansas St 3.2%; Iowa St 3.2%; Illinois St 3%; Auburn 2.6%; Virginia Tech 2.3%

As a percentage, Chicago takes as many poor students as Oregon St; MIT takes more than NC State; Harvard takes as many as George Tech; Stanford takes more than Kansas St. And so on.

The schools that rank badly on high median family income and low access for poor students are who you'd expect: Princeton, Yale, Vanderbilt, etc. Notre Dame is a particular standout for being terrible, with a median income at $191,000 and only taking 1.6% from the bottom 20% income bracket.

I think you and the poster you responded to are concerned about complementary issues.

You are saying "ability to pay is not a prerequisite", whereas the prior poster is saying "ability to pay can get you in".

Both are true.

I agree with that very broadly, which is why I acknowledged it's similar.

The point I'm disagreeing with, is that I don't believe it's exactly like the US. It's a bit different in the US because of the selection available. The US has dozens of large universities to choose from that would all rank among the top 100 globally. Those schools have often been established for 100-200 years or more, with the US having an opportunity to build up a lot of high quality universities over time. That isn't the case in China (yet), their growing affluence is literally only ~15 years old, it's dramatically more pressurized accordingly. China has a lot of increasingly affluent people competing for far fewer top tier universities, which is why they've been sending so many students to the US and Europe.