# 7 Response to "Getting In" by Malcolm Gladwell

After reading “Getting In” by Malcolm Gladwell, I was deeply amazed and totally agreed with what he had said about those Ivies league school and Havard. It is funny to see how a Canadian like Gladwell who attended and applied for the University of Toronto with relatively eased was shocked to see why people who went to Harvard were so proud of their university. For Gladwell, he just felt that it is not which college people attended determines their pride, but it is the fact they attended colleges and had the most experience out of it. I find it surprising that the reason why Ivy leagues school decided to look at their applicants with their personality, extracurricular activities and family background beside their academic performances was to reduce the number of Jews in their school. Like Gladwell said, these elite schools wouldn’t just want the intelligent people in their school. Instead they are like luxury brand who wants students that can be a superstar alumnus in the future who can keep the school’s reputation high.

        Contrary to what most parents think, these elite school are not like a treatment-effect institution like the Marine Corps that can trained individuals to become motivated students and get a degree with powerful name that can give them advantages in the future. Instead, they are more like modeling agency, a selection-effect agency that you don’t become beautiful by signing into it. You get selected because you are beautiful already. This make Gladwell argued that we shouldn’t be comparing that a student who went to Penn will earn more money in the future than those who went to Penn state. Instead, we should conclude that regardless of which school you attended, it is the inner quality and motivation one has that allow them to have great success in the future. By going to elite school won’t necessary give you advantage. Instead it is because you have those superstar quality that you will be admitted to those elite school, thus making the elite school to produce successful alumni.