It very much depends on the critical missing detail of what colleges these were. UC schools (for example) regularly turn down far more wealthy/famous students than them, and have a pretty decent system for judging based on merit before applications are considered. Other schools vary greatly - some fully anonymize applicants, others are outright for sale. We can’t know without more info, which given the public status of their parent is probably reasonably redacted for their privacy.
(Many merit based scholarships also strictly remove irrelevant PII from applications - but by no means all)
They could be really smart and studied hard or they could be lazy and dumb. They would have been accepted to the all regardless.
It very much depends on the critical missing detail of what colleges these were. UC schools (for example) regularly turn down far more wealthy/famous students than them, and have a pretty decent system for judging based on merit before applications are considered. Other schools vary greatly - some fully anonymize applicants, others are outright for sale. We can’t know without more info, which given the public status of their parent is probably reasonably redacted for their privacy.
(Many merit based scholarships also strictly remove irrelevant PII from applications - but by no means all)
Who’s to say those scholarships aren’t their parents money.