Malcolm Gladwell’s analysis of Ivy League admission practices really makes you think, and leaves me feeling very conflicted about the whole thing. As I spend time working at Harvard, I continue to reflect on the strange phenomenon of Ivy League institutions, how they admit students, and what it says about the students, the institution, and our society. Says Gladwell: “Elite schools, like any luxury brand, are an aesthetic experience — an exquisitely constructed fantasy of what it means to belong to an elite — and they have always been mindful of what must be done to maintain that experience.”