UC's Quirky Door

Even in a public university system, admissions can be a quirky thing. At the University of California, an inordinate fuss has been made over whether too many students with below-average SATs have been accepted. They get in partly because they had to overcome significant hurdles in life; one such student was a young veteran of foster homes who supported himself through his senior year of high school and still earned top grades.

By Karin Klein

April 9, 2005