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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.
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But at the time, Columbia, like many elite universities, used race-conscious admissions, a system the Supreme Court struck down in 2023.
Mamdani, who is the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City, identified as “Black or African American” on his 2009 Columbia University application even though he now says he does not consider himself Black, The New York Times reported Thursday.
According to The Times, the internal data came from a leaked database of past Columbia applications which was part of a recent hack targeting the Ivy League school.
Mamdani, then a high school senior, also checked “Asian” and reportedly wrote in “Ugandan” in the space for additional background. He was ultimately not accepted to Columbia even though his father is a professor at the elite school.
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“Even though these boxes are constraining,” Mamdani said, “I wanted my college application to reflect who I was.”
Mamdani told The Times that aside from those college forms, he doesn’t recall ever identifying as Black or African American.
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His parents are both of Indian descent. His father, Columbia professor Mahmood Mamdani, has lived in East Africa for generations, but Mamdani said there had been no intermarriage in the family with native African groups.
Mamdani has leaned into his South Asian and Muslim identity on the campaign trail. During a June speech at Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, he also stressed his African roots: “I was born in Kampala, Uganda… I was given my middle name, Kwame, by my father, who named me after the first Prime Minister of Ghana.”
Mamdani has proposed a list of policy changes to radically alter New York City more in line with his democratic socialist vision. He is running to unseat incumbent New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who was elected as a Democrat but is now running for re-election as an independent.
Former New York Democratic Mayor Andrew Cuomo is also running for mayor as an independent.
Fox News Digital reached out to Mamdani and Columbia University for comment but did not receive a response prior to publication.
Fox News Digital’s Jasmine Baehr contributed to this report.
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