<![CDATA[Forget Felicity Huffman. Bribes aren't the real scandal in US college admissions. This is]>

When I was in high school in New Zealand, I decided that I wanted to go to university in the United States. I contacted members of the Ivy League and a few other colleges and asked them to send me their application forms. (This was in 1999, when you couldn't do everything online yet).

Then I signed up to take the SAT and ordered such prep books as I could find on Amazon. My parents had a spare room next to our garage that smelled of exhaust fumes every time they came back with the car. In there, for the next couple of months, I spent my nights and weekends studying for the SAT " aside from doing my regular school work.

Then my mother took the two-hour drive with me up to Auckland on a Friday evening. We stayed overnight in a cheap hotel. The next morning, I went to take my SAT.

I also filled out the application forms by myself. My parents had suggestions. But because they were Taiwanese immigrants, I could not trust their command of English. So I ignored them. My high school teachers were happy to write letters of recommendation for me, but I doubted that any of them had ever written one to Harvard or Yale or MIT.

That was how I got accepted to Yale.

Consultants? Never heard of them.

It is not how many others do it.

Felicity Huffman, second from left, with the cast of Desperate Housewives. Huffman has been accused of involvement in a US college cheating scam. Photo: AP

Numerous wealthy parents including Hollywood celebrities like Desperate Housewives star Felicity Huffman are suspected of bribing university officials to get their children into the likes of Stanford or Yale. This news reminds me of those innocent days, when I still believed wholeheartedly in American meritocracy. Indeed, because I was the only person I knew who had got into Yale, my best guess was that the university was full of kids just like me.

I discovered soon enough how mistaken I was.

Even when I was filling out applications, I noticed one question that appeared on each university's forms: was either of my parents or any other relative an alumnus or alumna? I didn't think too much about it at the time. "No" was always the answer. My father got his master's degree from Ohio State, so I hardly came from working-class folk. But no, no one in my family had attended an elite US university.

Then I arrived on campus. One of my freshman year roommates had gone to Harvard-Westlake, the prestigious Los Angeles high school. At the time, I had never heard of Harvard-Westlake. But hey, it has "Harvard" right there in its name. Anna Paquin, the Oscar-winning actress, shared a limousine with him heading to his school prom.

Hallowed: Harvard University. Photo: AFP

I opened my copy of the "Facebook". The Facebook back then was a booklet that the university published with the headshot, contact information, and home address of each undergraduate. (In fact, it was the source of the name for the social media giant). And to my shock, I discovered just how many other of my fellow students had graduated from Harvard-Westlake. And Phillips Exeter. And Phillips Andover. And Horace Mann. And Groton.

I still knew very little about American college admissions and gave these schools the benefit of the doubt. They must have just been very good schools that educated some very smart kids. And in many cases, this was true.

Another one of my freshman year roommates was a "recruit". No one told me that there was such a thing until I arrived on campus. A recruit: someone brought in to play on one of the university's sports teams and held to a much lower academic standard. Notably, part of the scheme alleged in the current indictment had the children of the rich pretending to be such recruits. One night, Kyle went around demanding to know our SAT scores. "1,280, man!" he bellowed, announcing his own score. The rest of us all had scores of 1,500 or more.

Rowers pass the campus of Harvard University. Prowess at sport can help win you a place. Photo: AP

Even when I was a student, a debate raged on campus over whether the universities should still make allowances for recruits. It wasn't as though the Ivy League was famous for its athletic prowess, certainly not for the marquee American sports like football. The Ivy League universities and peer institutions were rather famous for academics. Why, then, should the universities continue to reserve substantial fractions of their incoming classes for students who were good at whacking a ball around or throwing a javelin? Every accepted student represented a student not accepted. Every ball-whacker or javelin-thrower on campus meant a budding biologist or tentative tech founder rejected.

But the most notable way in which the US university admission system may be the opposite of a meritocracy is that initial question that the colleges all asked me: did either of my parents or any other relative attend the institution in question?

The ability to toss a ball around is at least just that, an ability. And we can all admire athletic abilities. But being born to certain parents or having certain relatives?

In the end, the concept of "legacy" " being favoured for admission because your forebears had attended the same institution " is the most insidious practice engaged in by elite American universities. It serves to affirm the existing power structure, whether it be an aristocracy or plutocracy. It undermines the chances of the gifted kid from nowhere who works her own way up. It gives lie to the promise of America.

And yet, it is not only perfectly legal, it is a time-honoured tradition.

At Princeton, for example, over the five-year period up to 2018, legacy students had about a 30 per cent chance of being accepted, compared to 7 per cent for all applicants. At Harvard, from 2010 to 2015, a legacy student had a 33.6 per cent chance of acceptance, while a non-legacy student's chance stood at a measly 5.9 per cent " almost six times more difficult. At Georgetown, UVA, and Notre Dame, it is "only" twice as likely for a legacy to get in than for a non-legacy.

He got in: Jared Kushner went to Harvard. Photo: AP

These numbers are on top of those students having come from the type of families most likely to hire tutors and consultants and whatever other help the young ones needed. On top of having more likely gone to high schools with names like Harvard-Westlake and Phillips Andover.

After news of the indictment of the likes of Felicity Huffman broke for bribing college admission officials, a number of voices on my social media feeds raised the question: Why bother breaking the law when there are well-established legal ways to cheat on college admissions?

Why indeed. And that is the true scandal.

I mean, you don't really think that the Trumps got into Wharton, and Jared Kushner got into Harvard, on their own steam, do you?

William Han is a lawyer and writer. Born in Taiwan and a citizen of New Zealand, he is a graduate of Yale College and Columbia Law School

This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

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