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The biography provided by Barack Obama to his literary agent specified his birthplace as "Kenya". And, over the course of 17 years, despite multiple revisions by Obama, the Kenyan birthplace remained a fundamental part of the bio on the agent's website. Was Barack actually born in Kenya? I seriously doubt it, even though Michelle Obama has publicly stated that Kenya is her husband's "home country". Contemporary newspaper listings in Honolulu, for example, list the time and place of his birth. While this isn't ironclad proof, to be sure, it's good enough for me. No, my suspicion is that Mr. Obama...

James Breedin cannot keep track of how often he has been admitted to Howard University Hospital in Washington, D.C., for heart problems. "It's been so many," said Breedin, a 75-year-old disabled truck driver. One reason for his frequent returns, he says, is that he often can't afford the medications his doctor prescribes to keep his heart problems in check, "so I have to do without." And though his doctors recommend regular physical activity -- a lifestyle change that could also cut the chances he will find himself in the hospital again -- he said he fears exercising outside because of...

ABIGAIL FISHER, a white student, says she was denied admission to the University of Texas because of her race. She sued in Federal District Court in Austin, causing Judge Sam Sparks to spend time trying to make sense of a 2003 Supreme Court decision allowing racial preferences in higher education. “I’ve read it till I’m blue in the face,” Judge Sparks said in an early hearing in Ms. Fisher’s lawsuit. But the meaning of the central concept in the decision — “this esoteric critical mass of diversity of students,” he called it — kept eluding him. The 2003 Supreme Court...

SAT SCORES aren’t everything. But they can tell some fascinating stories. Take 1,623, for instance. That’s the average score of Asian-Americans, a group that Daniel Golden - editor at large of Bloomberg News and author of “The Price of Admission’’ - has labeled “The New Jews.’’ After all, much like Jews a century ago, Asian-Americans tend to earn good grades and high scores. And now they too face serious discrimination in the college admissions process. Notably, 1,623 - out of a possible 2,400 - not only separates Asians from other minorities (Hispanics and blacks average 1,364 and 1,276 on the...

SAT SCORES aren’t everything. But they can tell some fascinating stories. Take 1,623, for instance. That’s the average score of Asian-Americans, a group that Daniel Golden - editor at large of Bloomberg News and author of “The Price of Admission’’ - has labeled “The New Jews.’’ After all, much like Jews a century ago, Asian-Americans tend to earn good grades and high scores. And now they too face serious discrimination in the college admissions process. Notably, 1,623 - out of a possible 2,400 - not only separates Asians from other minorities (Hispanics and blacks average 1,364 and 1,276 on the...

A recent study of the applicants to seven elite colleges in 1997 found that Asian students were much more likely to be rejected than seemingly similar students of other races. Also, athletes and students from top high schools had admissions edges, as did low-income African-Americans and Hispanics. Translating the advantages into SAT scores, study author Thomas Espenshade, a Princeton sociologist, calculated that African-Americans who achieved 1150 scores on the two original SAT tests had the same chances of getting accepted to top private colleges in 1997 as whites who scored 1460s and Asians who scored perfect 1600s...

September 26, 2009 BY MARK J. KONKOL Staff Reporter/mkonkol@suntimes.com Will fewer black students get admitted to Chicago's magnet and selective enrollment schools next year? That's the question school watchdogs are asking after a federal judge this week lifted a nearly 30-year-old consent decree ordering the desegregation of Chicago Public Schools. The ruling will likely end the consideration of race as a factor in determining who gets accepted to some of the city's best-performing public schools. "Our primary concern is to ensure there is a fair and equal access to selective enrollment and magnet schools throughout the city," ACLU legal director...

Now, schools like Boston College, DePaul University and Tufts University also want to measure prospective students' personalities. Using recently developed evaluation systems, these schools and others are aiming to quantify so-called noncognitive traits such as leadership, resilience and creativity. Colleges say such assessments are boosting the admissions chances for some students who might not have qualified based solely on grades and traditional test scores. The noncognitive assessments also are being used to screen out students believed to be at a higher risk of dropping out, and to identify newly admitted students who might need extra tutoring. Big nonprofits that administer...

Poor students to be given two grade 'head start' when applying for university places DANIEL MARTIN 09th August 2009 Unfair: Middle class students are losing out as they are not given priority Children from poorer backgrounds applying to university could be given a two-grade 'head start' under plans being examined by Lord Mandelson. Told by ministers to widen access, some colleges and medical schools are already lowering entry requirements for working-class applicants by as much as two A-level grades, it emerged yesterday. This means school leavers from middle-class households are being turned down for places despite doing better in exams...

The University of Illinois, which employs communist terrorist Bill Ayers as a professor, has been hit by an admissions scandal which has forced the resignation of the chairman of its board of trustees. An investigation by the Chicago Tribune found that more than 800 undergraduate applicants received special consideration from 2005 to 2009 because "they had powerful patrons, including elected officials, trustees and donors." It added that "Dozens more law and graduate school applicants also got preferential treatment." But how did Bill Ayers get his job? All signs point to his rich father, Thomas Ayers, who was CEO of Commonwealth...

The British High Court of Appeal ruled on Thursday against the admissions policy of a Jewish school, saying it "discriminated unlawfully" by using the faith of the mother as an admissions criteria. In a landmark judgement, the Court of Appeal said on Thursday that it was illegal for the Jewish Free School (JFS) in Kenton, north London, to admit pupils on the basis of whether their mother was Jewish or not. Lords Justice Sedley, Rimer and Lady Justice Smith concluded: "The requirement that if a pupil is to qualify for admission his mother must be Jewish, whether by descent or...

Senioritis Cured by: Deborah Lambert, May 21, 2009 Senioritis is that time-honored “disease” that affects graduating seniors during the last half of their senior year. However, it might just be in remission, according to USA Today, which reports that “skipping classes, missing tests, attending parties instead of athletic practice and generally slacking off at the end of the last year of high school,” might not be a winning option this year. Here’s why. Since colleges are swamped with a record number of applications from the largest graduating classes in history, they have decided to over-enroll their freshman classes....

It's fair to say the tide of elite opinion now runs solidly against the use of the SAT in college admissions. Last fall, the National Association of College Admissions Counselors (NACAC) released a report calling on its members at last to act on their skepticism by taking steps to decommission the test for use at their schools. When the report was presented at the group's convention last September, the only complaints were that it didn't go far enough in condemning the test. "It's a lousy test," one NACAC member said heatedly on the convention floor. "It's destructive of what all...

Asian-Americans blast UC admissions policy They say new standards are unfair, will reduce their numbers on campus April 24, 2009 SAN FRANCISCO - A new admissions policy set to take effect at the University of California system in three years is raising fears among Asian-Americans that it will reduce their numbers on campus, where they account for a remarkable 40 percent of all undergraduates. University officials say the new standards — the biggest change in UC admissions since 1960 — are intended to widen the pool of high school applicants and make the process more fair. But Asian-American advocates, parents...

Just what makes a good lawyer? In trying to answer that question, professors at the University of California, Berkeley, have come up with a test that they say is better at predicting success in the field than the widely used Law School Admission Test. The LSAT, as the half-day exam is known, does not claim to predict much beyond a student’s performance in law school. But critics contend that it does not evaluate how good a lawyer someone will be and tests for the wrong things. They also say it keeps many black and Hispanic students — who tend to...

College Recruiting Roulette Rules by: Deborah Lambert, January 27, 2009 Kathleen Kingsbury, in a Daily Beast exclusive, lets college admissions officers tell their personal stories about why some students make the cut and others don’t. She advises students who’ve mailed off their applications to “recalibrate your expectations based on your race, your wealth, and whether the NFL team in the city where that college is located is on a losing streak. The shadowy world of college admissions has left millions of confused and frustrated rejects in its wake. (So stop practicing the oboe.) Current and former admissions officers from colleges...

Robot U by: Deborah Lambert, January 07, 2009 Those who say we’re turning into mind-numbed robots may find ample support for this view in the current crop of college applications. It seems that students’ submissions are so highly polished that they’ve strayed from the real person into “slick misguided attempts at perfection,” says the Wall Street Journal’s Sue Shellenberger. Pity the folks who have to wade through this stuff. A heavy dose of students’ overseas service work starts to read like a travelogue. And school personnel soon detect parental influence after an overload of heretofores and semicolons are sprinkled throughout...

Undocumented residents living in the country illegally can go to college here. That message was heard loud and clear by roughly 40 Hispanic parents and children who participated in a seminar Thursday night at Passaic High School designed to encourage undocumented immigrants to pursue higher education. Diana Esparragoza, 16, a sophomore at the high school who moved to the United States from Colombia when she was 7, said she was heartened to learn she could go to college. She said she dreams of being a psychologist or a lawyer but she wasn’t sure if she needed a Social Security number...

GOFFSTOWN – St. Anselm College is seeking to double the enrollment of Hispanics, African-Americans, and other minorities and create a campus environment that welcomes students of other Christian denominations, religions, and different sexual orientations. "We need to be a place where everyone feels at home, not just some people," said the Rev. Jonathan DeFelice, president of the college. "What are the things we do that are unattractive and therefore keeping some people away? We're asking that question ourselves. Are we doing enough so that people feel comfortable and at home here?" Denise Askin, a retired English professor, was hired this...

Arguing that UCLA admissions policies are being manipulated to circumvent the state's ban on consideration of applicants' race, a professor there has resigned from a faculty committee that he says refused to allow him to study the matter. Political science professor Tim Groseclose resigned Thursday from the Committee on Undergraduate Admissions and Relations with Schools, saying high-ranking university administrators and fellow committee members are engaged in a "coverup" to block illegal activity from being discovered. "A growing body of evidence strongly suggests that UCLA is cheating on admissions," he wrote in an 89-page report posted on a UCLA website. University...

Raleigh, N.C. — Two months after recommending that North Carolina community colleges deny admission to illegal immigrants, the state Attorney General's Office has reversed that stance. The switch comes after U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials told state officials that federal laws don't prohibit illegal immigrants from attending college. Community College System officials decided in May to stop allowing illegal immigrants to enroll in degree programs after the Attorney General's Office issued an advisory opinion recommending the 58 community colleges tighten their admissions standards to be more in line with federal laws. J.B. Kelly, general counsel for the Attorney General's...

Last month, Wake Forest dropped the SAT and ACT as an entrance requirement, becoming the only top-30 national university with a test-optional policy. This step away from standardized tests will help us and other institutions of higher education move closer to the goals of greater educational quality and opportunity. Our decision to reevaluate our admissions policy grew out of a close look at the state of higher education and some long, hard thinking about the kind of university we want Wake Forest to be. For several years, a growing body of research has made clear that America's top colleges and...

Goodbye SAT? by: Bethany Stotts, May 28, 2008 Criticisms of the flaws of standardized testing abound in American education circles, be it for allegations of racism in the ACT and SAT’s or complaints about No Child Left Behind’s unaccountable “accountability.” Now FairTest, a non-profit opposed to the “misuses and flaws of testing practices,” has advanced a media campaign heralding Wake Forest University’s recent choice to become “test-optional” as the harbinger of a national trend. Both Smith College and Wake Forest University announced their switch to test-optional admission policies this month, but WFU’s crossover is exceptional due to its rank as...

The University of Florida has launched a privacy investigation, looking for students and faculty members who may have leaked confidential information about a controversial admissions decision

College Admissions Adjust To Increase In Home Schooling By SUZANNE PARDINGTON   Jenny Grant, 19, was home-schooled. Now she is in college. (Photo by Thomas Boyd)     PORTLAND, Ore. — Jenny Grant's transcript was written by her mom.Her classroom was her home and community.And her idea of a high school sport was fencing.But none of that means she was less prepared for college than graduates of traditional high schools.The problem was proving it.As the number of home-schoolers multiplies, more students like Grant are making the leap directly from home to college, creating new challenges for students and colleges alike.The...

A year after the city's racial quotas kept their daughter out of an elite public school, an Indian couple from Brooklyn is filing a class-action lawsuit to make sure it doesn't happen again to her or any child. "Children should be judged on the content of their character, not on the color of their skin," said Dr. Anjan Rau, the girl's dad, about the quotas at Mark Twain School in Coney Island. "The selection process should be colorblind," Rau said. For decades, the school has enforced racial double standards on its tests to maintain a 6-4 white-to-minority ratio to comply...

The world gets more competitive every day, so why would California's education elites want to dumb down their public university admissions standards? The answer is to serve the modern liberal piety known as "diversity" while potentially thwarting the will of the voters. The University of California Board of Admissions is proposing to lower to 2.8 from 3.0 the minimum grade point average for admission to a UC school. That 3.0 GPA standard has been in place for 40 years. Students would also no longer be required to take the SAT exams that test for knowledge of specific subjects, such as...

The student, and others like him, are worried about the Common Application, a mainly online form shared by 315 schools, predominantly private ones, including Harvard, Stanford and Caltech. Last year, it began asking students -- and their counselors -- about any suspensions, dismissals or probationary terms because of academic or behavioral misconduct and whether students had been "convicted of a misdemeanor, felony or other crime." The applicants are encouraged to explain the incidents. College admissions counselors realize that "not every 17-year-old is a perfect human being," said Seth Allen, president-elect of the Common Application, the nonprofit organization that administers the...

Christian schools sue University of Calif. LOS ANGELES, Oct. 8 (UPI) -- A lawsuit soon to go to trial charges the University of California with discriminating against prospective students who attend Christian schools. The suit, brought by an association of Christian schools, supports the conviction of many conservative Christians that there is hostility to their faith in public schools, the Chicago Tribune reported Monday. "This is just another example of what's happening on a much larger scale," said Robert Tyler, a lawyer for the Christian schools. The outcome of the trial in U.S. District Court could affect California's estimated 800...

CHICAGO--On a beautiful fall day last week, I found myself on the main quadrangle of the University of Chicago, walking with the school's admissions director, Theodore O'Neill, when a freshman girl approached us. "How's it going?" Mr. O'Neill inquired of her orientation week. "This place is Mecca," she answered. Mr. O'Neill decides who gets to go on this pilgrimage, and there are hundreds, maybe thousands, of high-school seniors who would kill for the opportunity I have today--to spend an uninterrupted hour talking with him. These eager boys and girls might try to enthrall Mr. O'Neill with their knowledge of the...

June 25, 2007 -- A Brooklyn mother and father got the shock of their lives when school officials informed them their brilliant 11-year-old girl was denied admission to an elite public school - solely because she's of Indian descent. "I feel bad because I would have gotten in if I was white," Nikita Rau lamented over her failed bid to attend the Mark Twain School, IS 239, in Coney Island, a magnet school for gifted students. It turns out Mark Twain - unlike all but one other city public school - admits students according to racial quotas established in 1974...

BOSTON - In a change certain to shake up college admissions, Harvard University will ditch its "early action" round of applications on the grounds that it favors wealthier students over minorities and the poor. It called on other universities to follow suit. Starting next year, Harvard will eliminate its early round of admissions that allows high school students to apply by Nov. 1 of their senior year and receive a decision _ accept, reject or defer _ by Dec. 15. Applicants hoping to enter in the fall of 2008 will face a common application due date of Jan. 1. "The...

University of California, Berkeley, Chancellor Robert Birgeneau is creating a top-level post to focus on keeping the campus fair and welcoming. Birgeneau said he wants to make sure there is equal opportunity for students, faculty and staff regardless of religion, sexual orientation, race, gender or whether someone has a disability or not. "I very strongly believe that every single person (should) feel that this is a place where they belong, where they are respected for their individuality, for what they represent and their background," Birgeneau said Wednesday in announcing the new position at a back-to-school briefing. A national search is...

The effort to put an anti-affirmative-action proposal before Michigan voters was wrought with fraud and should be blocked from the November ballot, lawyers for the proposal's opponents argued in federal court Friday. But lawyers representing the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative and state elections officials told U.S. District Judge Arthur Tarnow that voters would be harmed if they're not allowed to decide whether to ban race and gender preferences in government hiring and public-university admissions in Michigan.

**Vanity** Dear Fellow FReepers: I am counseling a group of high school seniors with a keen interest in attending the Ivy League - we have toured Princeton, Yale, Dartmouth and Harvard as well as Stanford. These are conservative (mostly Christian) students and I am well aware of the perils of the Ivy League - I've even had them read "Poison Ivy" and had them consult the NR's guide to colleges. I believe that they are prepared for the left wing bias. That being said, (and NR giving Princeton more latitude for being fairer than other schools to diversity of thought)...

AACRAO reports that about 400,000 students - 2 percent of all college students, 3 percent of students attending community colleges, and 4 percent of students in fopros - do NOT have a high school degree! But, how can they get in without a high school degree, and what difference does it make anyway? Well, they can get in with a GED, of course, but that is not the case here. These students get in by old-fashioned 'fudging.' I have had students in my classes at the fopro where I teach who did NOT have high school diplomas. NO! I didn't...

The reality is that because young men are rarer, they're more valued applicants. Today, two-thirds of colleges and universities report that they get more female than male applicants, and more than 56 percent of undergraduates nationwide are women. Demographers predict that by 2009, only 42 percent of all baccalaureate degrees awarded in the United States will be given to men.

A FEW days ago I watched my daughter Madalyn open a thin envelope from one of the five colleges to which she had applied. "Why?" was what she was obviously asking herself as she handed me the letter saying she was waitlisted. She had taken the toughest courses in her high school and had done well... She had not, however, been named a National Merit finalist, dug a well for a village in Africa, or climbed to the top of Mount Rainier. She is a smart, well-meaning, hard-working teenage girl, but in this day and age of swollen applicant pools...

College admissions offices scrambled Wednesday to reconsider applications after learning they had received incorrect SAT scores for about 4,000 students who took the exam last October. Some in the field criticized the College Board, owner of the exam, for failing to disclose the problem until so late in the admissions season. College officials said they expected few admissions decisions would be changed, but they were taking a second look at applicants whose scores were reported incorrectly. Generally, SAT scores are only one factor schools consider, but they can be critical in admissions to particular programs or eligibility for merit-based scholarships....

Before checking the box to identify her race on her college admissions application, Cecilia Vaughn hesitated for a moment, torn by conflicting emotions. It was an optional but important question that might increase her chances of being admitted if for no other reason than the fact she is black. Yet she believed her application was strong enough to stand on its own. She decided to answer the question. "I'm selling myself, and I want them to know as much about me as possible," said Ms. Vaughn, now a senior at Duquesne University. "I don't want anything to be a surprise."...

Just this week, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer paid a visit to his high school alma mater, Lowell High School in San Francisco. He took a tour of the school’s campus, which moved in 1962 from downtown San Francisco to its present Sunset District location, and then spent an hour taking questions from the school’s junior and senior classes. According to AP, Justice Breyer (Class of 1955) was treated like a “rock star” during his visit to the highly-selective school’s campus. Besides the change in location, Lowell High School has in recent years undergone an immense transformation of its student...

Attorneys representing college students from 19 states filed a class-action lawsuit seeking hundreds of millions of dollars from officials for charging them significantly more than illegal aliens pay to attend state-run colleges in California.,P. The state allows illegal aliens to pay in-state tuition, while making out-of-state American citizens pay higher tuition fees. The 42 plaintiffs allege that California lawmakers and members of the board of regents for the University of California "knowingly violated a federal law enacted in 1996 that says any state that offers discounted in-state tuition to its illegal aliens must provide the same lower rates to all...

About 30 UC San Diego admissions readers crowded around eight tables, debating the merits of a fat stack of college applications. It was their second day of training for what may be the most important decision in the young lives of thousands of college applicants. And it all came down to agreeing on the number of points to award each one. One lesson became clear quickly: There is plenty of gray in a system designed in black and white. [...] And then come the essays. Not a writing test The essay is not measured for its literary merit, intellectual expression...

The colleges of Britain's prestigious Oxford University will lose their 800-year-old right to choose their undergraduates amid government pressure to admit more students from state schools and lower social classes. Instead, admissions will be centralized to encourage applications from pupils from broad-based secondary schools who find current arrangements "confusing and opaque", the university said, according to The Daily Telegraph. Pupils will apply to the university, not a specific college, and will be interviewed and selected by the appropriate department, not by their potential tutors, the university said. The university admitted that as a result, colleges will lose autonomy and individuality,...

Religious schools challenge admission standards in court In a small room at the University of California's headquarters in downtown Oakland, UC counsel Christopher Patti sat beside a stack of textbooks proposed for use by Calvary Chapel Christian School in Riverside County -- books UC rejected as failing to meet freshmen admission requirements. Biology and physics textbooks from Christian publishers were found wanting, as were three Calvary humanities courses. "The university is not telling these schools what they can and can't teach," Patti said. "What the university is doing is simply establishing what is and is not its entrance requirements. It's...

LOS ANGELES – The college plans of six students at a Murietta school have sparked a lawsuit that could have implications for academia nationwide. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, contends that officials with the University of California system discriminated against students from Calvary Chapel Christian School in Murietta when they decided that some of the school's religious-viewpoint courses – such as "Christianity's Influence on American History" – do not meet the UC system's admissions standards. The complaint, pushed by the Association of Christian Schools International, alleges the university's decision violates the First Amendment religious-practice rights...

<p>CHICAGO — The U.S. Justice Department has threatened to sue Southern Illinois University next week unless the college opens up three paid fellowship programs once reserved for minority and female students.</p> <p>The government says it will file the lawsuit because the fellowships discriminate against "whites, nonpreferred minorities and males," according to a letter dated Nov. 4.</p>

Appeals court upholds Seattle's use of race in school admissions By Gene Johnson The Associated Press SEATTLE — The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday upheld the Seattle School District's use of race as a tiebreaking factor in high-school admissions. "We conclude that the district has a compelling interest in securing the educational and social benefits of racial (and ethnic) diversity," the 7-4 majority wrote, overturning a 2-1 decision by a three-judge 9th Circuit panel last year. "We also conclude the district's plan is narrowly tailored to meet the district's compelling interests." A parents group that challenged the...

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday upheld the Seattle School District's use of race as a tiebreaking factor in high-school admissions. "We conclude that the district has a compelling interest in securing the educational and social benefits of racial (and ethnic) diversity," the 7-4 majority wrote, overturning a 2-1 decision by a three-judge 9th Circuit panel last year. "We also conclude the district's plan is narrowly tailored to meet the district's compelling interests." A parents' group that challenged the tiebreaker said it would appeal. The ruling is the second Circuit Court opinion this year to uphold voluntary...

(AgapePress) - The University of California system is being sued for alleged viewpoint and content discrimination against Christian school instruction and textbooks. The Association of Christian Schools International (ACSI), which represents more than 800 schools worldwide, has filed a federal lawsuit challenging a University of California policy that bars students taught from a conservative Christian viewpoint from being admitted to schools in the UC system. The suit accuses the university system of violating the free-speech rights of Christian students. Wendell Bird, an attorney for ACSI, says UC admissions officials have told Christian schools that several courses taught from a Christian...