I was never directly involved in Ivy League admissions decisions, but I did do interviewing for one.

It is hard to overstate how many supremely qualified applicants these universities get each year. Far more than they have space for. Most of the people I interviewed despite amazing applications would invariably not be admitted. These are extremely selective schools- Brown University for example has a 5% acceptance rate.

I don't know much about the legal landscape of affirmative action, but a lot of the university admissions process is a crapshoot among fantastic applicants. So I've certainly more appreciated the randomness of it all in terms of this debate. I think it is a disservice to ever insinuate affirmative action led to the admission of a student that was not qualified- and more to the point I think it is just a laughable notion if you consider the distribution of SAT scores and GPA of applicants to schools like Harvard.

I find legacy admissions a much more pernicious state of affairs.