From Fox News: After it was reported that democratic socialist New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani identified as “Asian” and “Black/African American” in his application to Columbia University, his SAT scores were revealed to be below the median score for students admitted into the school, according to a new report.
Independent journalist Christopher Rufo reported on Monday that, according to Mamdani’s full Columbia application, he scored 2140 out of 2400 on the SAT, which is below the median score of students admitted to the university in 2009.
A 2009 statement by the university said that students admitted into the Class of 2013 scored between 2110 and 2300 on the SAT, which would have placed Mamdani within the range but below the median.
Mamdani has said he identifies as “an American who was born in Africa,” and stated that checking multiple boxes was an effort to reflect his “complex background,” not to gain an advantage in the competitive admissions process.
Mamdani, 33, was born in Kampala, Uganda, and his parents are both of Indian descent. The family reportedly moved to Cape Town, South Africa when he was 5 years old, then moved to New York City when he was 7 years old. He only became an American citizen in 2018. He is a Shia Muslim.
Below is an excerpt from Rufo’s report, as he reveals that Mamdani was actually rejected by Columbia University.
The wrinkle in the story, however, is that, despite having a father on the faculty and marking black on his application, Columbia rejected Mamdani. There are two plausible theories for why this happened. First, in general, Columbia is a highly competitive university with an admissions rate of less than ten percent, which means that many candidates around the median will not make the cut.
Second, there is a possibility that Mamdani’s box-checking gambit backfired. The full application includes the name and contact information for his father, Mahmood Mamdani, and his mother, Mira Nair, both of whom are public figures and neither of whom is black. The application also included a flag noting that the elder Mamdani appeared to be “affiliated with Columbia” and another line noting the family’s address in an exclusive Manhattan neighborhood. With even cursory research, an admissions officer could have seen that Mr. Mamdani was neither black, nor underprivileged.
Socialist mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani’s SAT score revealed: report https://t.co/IWbUTawPCy
— Fox News (@FoxNews) July 8, 2025
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