A friend whose child recently applied to NYU downloaded the hacker’s ZIP file of liberated data (canonical link; it may be that this has been getting updated with additional redactions) and found his child’s name and other identifiable characteristics.
Background… “Hacker claims responsibility for replacing NYU’s website with apparent test scores, racial epithet” (New York Post):
A dark web user claimed responsibility for briefly hacking New York University’s website Saturday, and replacing it with what appeared to be student test scores and an apparent racial epithet.
Instead of the usual images of college athletes and the Greenwich Village campus, the site featured a black background with green writing showing a message along with charts of what were purported to be SAT and ACT scores and GPAs for students in 2024, divided by race.
“On June 29 2023, racial affirmative action in college admissions was ruled illegal,” the female hacker’s message reads. “Computer N–gy Exploitation (CNE) reveals NYU continued anyway.”
My friend and his computer-oriented son played around with the data and found an interesting pattern… kids from their local high school were in the database as having applied early with certain SAT scores and GPA. The database showed that they were rejected (perhaps for being white, since their qualifications were above the medians for admitted precious Black applicants). In conversations at school, the kids claimed higher SAT/GPA numbers than they reported to NYU and the kids didn’t mention having applied to NYU (i.e., they kept their rejections secret).
What does it take to be accepted? My friend and his son found a good athlete from a Maskachusetts public high school. His (weighted GPA) was 4.15 and his SAT score was 1550. He’s the wrong kind of Brown (Indian), apparently, and was rejected.
The data download arrives as CSV files, but don’t try opening in Excel. The files are around 3 GB in size:
Whatever the test scores of the carefully-curated-by-skin-color NYU admittees. they can all be on the #RightSideOfHistory (link) with the NYU Queer Union:
Speaking of NYU offline, I highly recommend the 24/7 Astor Place Donut Pub. Plentiful outlets and very nice toilets. Well-heeled travellers welcomed. Suprisingly free of students. At night, the girls are living their taylor swift dreams and travel in blonde packs. ee cummings is forgotten. White Horse Tavern is a tourist trap.