They weren’t majoring in ethics

Harvard University has rejected the application of 119 people because they were found to have hacked into the school’s admission web site. The site is used by many universities and other schools are investigating to see if any of their applicants did the same thing.

The students, or rather “student hopefuls”, used the exploit found by a hacker in order to gain access to the site and see if their application had been accepted.

Until yesterday, Harvard, which had branded the hacking as unethical from the start, stopped short of explicitly saying the hackers’ applications would be rejected. Other victims, such as MIT’s Sloan School of Management, Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, Duke’s Fuqua School of Business, and Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business similarly said they frown upon the hacking and are investigating, but have not said they will reject applications.

I applaud Harvard’s decision. A strong stance is needed in order to show other prospective students that unethical tactics will not be tolerated and have severe penalties. It wouldn’t have killed these people to wait and see if their application was approved. That’s why you apply to several colleges/universities and hope that at least one accepts you.

08.Mar.05 Moron