Here's the thing, though. There's an argument - a good one, and one I buy into - that the "super-rich" method and the poor people's method (merit) both benefit the school AND THE OTHER STUDENTS. The middle group does not.
I went to Uconn, and the year I was a freshman was the year they hired both Geno Auriemma and Jim Calhoun (women's and men's basketball coaches, respectively). I remember walking through the field house - where both played their home games - and it was a dark dreary place like you'd see in a movie like Hoosiers. My dorm had beer stains on each end of the hallway from the kegs (before they were outlawed on campus). The rest of the building was a drab, brick and block building with rooms that looked like a nicer jail cell with wooden doors. When I was a junior, my brother transferred in, and he didn't get on campus housing. At the time I was pissed, because the "basketball players" all got new fancy digs at the one new dorm and he had to live in a shitty apartment off campus? Fuck that noise...
Except... my brother flunked out after a year, and in the subsequent years the men won four national basketball titles, and the women are up to I think 11 now. The new field house is state of the art, and right next to the 6,000 seat Gampel Pavilion (he of the super rich) that is as bright and airy as a space station. The library is all new (when I was there, the bricks were falling off the outside because the genius that designed it forgot to account for the weight of the books, I shit you not). The softball field where my team won the intramural championship in '86 (and where Alan Hunter showed up for Spring Break and mud volley ball that same year) is now a state-of-the-art graduate business building. We have TWO hotels on campus. Formerly known as an "ag school", the number of applicants at Uconn - my "safety school" - is now through the roof, and as a result of the elevated standards, it is now considered a public Ivy, specializing in Business, Science, and Psychology.
A rising tide raises all boats. The super rich do that (to an extent). Having some brainiac take your test for you while you post instagram videos from your dorm room while claiming "I don't know how much of school I'm gonna attend," and "I do want the experience of, like, game days, partying [but] I don't really care about school, as you guys all know." doesn't move the needle one little bit.
My kid is, right now, in the process of selecting a school. It's down to three (I think). I have no problem in someone investing in the school my kid is going to, be it with flat out cash, or with their intelligence. I have no interest whatsoever in coddling Olivia Jade or making Lori Loughlin feel better about her parenting skills.