Zohran Mamdani’s SAT Score Revealed

The elite mayoral candidate played racial shell games in pursuit of prestige.

Over the long weekend, the New York Times scooped a story about New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani’s application to Columbia University, in which he claimed that his ethnicity was “Asian” and “Black/African American.” In his defense, Mamdani claimed that his parents are both Indian, which is why he checked Asian, and that he was born in Uganda, which is why he checked black.

If only it were so innocent. As any ambitious youth in America understands, there is a huge payout in marking “black” for college applications. Mamdani’s father is a professor at Columbia, and his mother is a famous filmmaker, so the idea that he did not understand the Ivy League’s racial calculus is not credible.

The Times story captured the details of Mamdani’s box-checking, but gently avoided the underlying question: With such an elite background, why did Mamdani feel the need to falsely portray himself as black?

I have obtained Mamdani’s full Columbia application, which might help unravel this mystery. According to the materials, Mamdani scored a 2140 out of 2400 on the SAT. At the time, this was below the median SAT score for admitted students at Columbia and, given the prevailing distribution by race, well below the median SAT score for Asian students, but likely above the median SAT score for black students—hence, the advantage of marking “black.”

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.