Officials in the offices of the school's president and admissions department didn't return calls.

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Sahlman told me that beyond high grades and test scores, the HBS admissions department looks for evidence of leadership.

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If you're in the people-selection business-in, say, a personnel or college admissions department-your job assignment can trigger a certain amount of cognitive dissonance, that being the mental disarray that comes from simultaneously holding two contradictory positions.

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Although public high schools submit their admissions decisions to the Department of Education by the end of January, it takes three to four weeks to review the data, run matches, follow up with schools and check accuracy, school officials said.

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Talk to professors, department heads and the admissions office.

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Last fall, the Department of Education attempted to change the admissions process so the highest-scoring children would have the best shot at one of the limited seats.

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Academic selection was not forbidden in the Department for Education and Skills' code of practice for admissions, he added.

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The Department for Education and Skills said that, now the co-ordinated admissions scheme had been finalised, the Office of the Schools Adjudicator would decide whether or not schools could use those criteria in the coming year.

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Sotomayor lodged a grievance with what was then the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, accusing Princeton of an "institutional pattern of discrimination" in admissions and in hiring "Puerto Rican and Chicano" faculty.

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