The people who feel that colleges are rigged and feel upset by this often don’t think about how unfair our preK - 12 system of education is in the States. The opportunities you had can’t be compared with those of many who are from less well off school districts. Read Savage Inequalities and then think about what it really means to be ‘rigged’. If anything, colleges are often favoring full pay students. They do often have a big advantage in admission at various schools. See Angel Perez of Trinity College’s article about how they have to fill a certain amount of tuition each year by admitting enough full and most pay students which can mean taking higher-ranking kids off the admit list. That school is not alone in this. You don’t complain about how it is unfair that inner city schools are less well funded and have less than many schools in areas like where it sounds you live and you don’t complain about the advantage wealthy people have who can full pay, just ‘minorities’. Others are right that if you were trying for LACs in the NE as a male who wants the humanities, that is usually an advantage as most of those schools want to keep the male female ratio 50/50 and most have majority female students.
I’m glad you got the school you wanted. I disagree that going to a ‘lesser’ ranked school would be a disadvantage. most CEOs went to state schools (and not top ranked ones). There is something to be said for having to work harder and make it in a school that doesn’t pamper its students. This builds skills that are useful to success in the real world that many who go to those schools have to develop and some at higher ranked schools that cater to students don’t have to develop as much. Also, top students can stand out in lower ranked schools and get more research and internship opportunities as a result. Being the lowest ranked person at a high school is not shown to be as good as being a big fish in a small pond on future career success according to some research studies on this.
And if you did get into Tulane and are saying the students there are a bunch of dummies or whatever word it was you used, that’s really offensive and wrong. Tulane is a great school. Someone I know went there and is very well off. He credits the college to much of his success. That’s one person but that school certainly has a solid reputation for being a great college.
I hope you don’t go through life with these types of limited judgments of people and schools and things. It will make your life less enjoyable and you will miss a lot and you might come off as arrogant to the point others are offended and you end up missing things as a result of their reaction to that.