I agree with that assessment and have always considered the criticism of donor/legacy admissions as simple jealousy. Nothing wrong with taking some donors who are going to open up opportunity for regular students, even though I personally wouldn't want to be one of those kids with rich donor parents.

The bigger flaws with Ivies and Stanford (but imo not MIT or CMU) are in how they don't necessarily pick the regular students based on merit either. I went to a top high school and saw many classmates go to those; most of them were about average but managed to pad their resumes or play some diversity card, while most of the real gems went elsewhere. I really thrived going to UC Berkeley and think it was my best option. Still, it was obvious how the neighboring Stanford uni had way more money and connections floating around for the number of students, meaning less need to fight over resources (on the flip side, Cal taught me how to fight when needed).