I agree with your title but for a wildly different reason.

The admissions process for the top few colleges is sorta just destined to be wack. It's almost impossible to only be able to admit 4% of applicants without having a somewhat confusing system open to criticism.

But for a considerable portion of Americans the college process isn't really what A2C makes it out to be, plenty of people just apply to a state school or two through rolling or EA and then happily commit once they get accepted. State schools run the exact kind of admissions programs people on A2C always claim to want: stats based admission with an emphasis on merit through honors programs.