The woman I was dating wasn't...don't know about her classmate.
Seriously, about 30% of the class might be legacy admissions and big donor family admissions.
Yup,I know that that's quite common at the more prestigious schools.But IMO all such admissions represent a form of "affirmative action".I can't say whether her classmate had the same attitude when revealing Harvard's "inner workings".
The most recent Harvard Magazine has an article about legacy admissions and affirmative action.
https://harvardmagazine.com/2019/01/what-legacy
I’m not sure about copyright of the material, otherwise I would post it in its entirety. Here is a comment by the new president.
“As for the preference given to legacies, Bacow said it is not pointed out often enough that “Legacies are, as a group, arguably the most qualified applicants…by any measure.” That should be so: highly educated parents ought to be, and disproportionately are, interested in securing the benefits of that kind of learning for their progeny.