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According to this article from the BBC, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22025328:

As many as 15% of white students admitted to elite colleges don't meet admissions standards.

This quote seems to be a rephrasing of a quote from this article (that the above article links to):

Researchers with access to closely guarded college admissions data have found that, on the whole, about 15 percent of freshmen enrolled at America's highly selective colleges are white teens who failed to meet their institutions' minimum admissions standards.

This number is hard for me to believe, and I wonder if this claim has any basis.

SIMEL
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Kenshin
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  • The quote isn't talking about the UK. It is sandwiched between references to American schools and a link to a Boston Globe article stating the 15% figure in reference to "freshmen enrolled at America's highly selective colleges". I edited the question to be about US schools. –  Oct 06 '13 at 06:54
  • It is possible that the critical word here is *"legacy"*. As in *"legacy admissions"* as in *"her dad is an alumni so she gets N points towards admission"*. No idea how much of each cohort sneaks in on that, but I know that they *do* give some consideration to that kind of thing. – dmckee --- ex-moderator kitten Oct 06 '13 at 07:26
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    *Researchers with access to closely guarded college admissions data* seems to imply those data are not accessible, hence the claim is very much unlikely to be verifiable... – nico Oct 06 '13 at 14:47
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    @nico : Here we have a newspaper reporter making claims about what some researchers have found. If those researchers have published someone, that paper would be a good answer. – Christian Oct 06 '13 at 16:06
  • @Christian: sure, fair point. – nico Oct 06 '13 at 16:21
  • The bottom of the article says, about its author, **Peter Schmidt** is a deputy editor of The Chronicle of Higher Education and author of "Color and Money: How Rich White Kids Are Winning the War Over College Affirmative Action." – ChrisW Oct 06 '13 at 20:00

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