Fascinating article by Malcolm Gladwell over on The New Yorker site. He explores the history of admissions at Harvard, Princeton and Yale, and how the schools are essentially "in the luxury-brand-management business."

Put it this way -- if you were gay or Jewish in the 1920s (or looked or acted gay or Jewish), I hope you had a safety school.

In the nineteentwenties, when Harvard tried to figure out how many Jews they had on campus, the admissions office scoured student records and assigned each suspected Jew the designation j1 (for someone who was “conclusively Jewish”), j2 (where the “preponderance of evidence” pointed to Jewishness), or j3 (where Jewishness was a “possibility”).

One [Harvard] application -- and at this point you can almost hear it going to the bottom of the pile —- was notated, “Short with big ears.”

Not sure how long this will remain online and free. Apologies if that time period runs out.