Northwestern Remains a Need-Blind School

EVANSTON—This Sunday, allegedly blind Weinberg freshman Dave White was found to be faking his condition. White reportedly fabricated the story in order to gain admittance to Northwestern on the basis of adding to a more diverse class. White’s roommate, Medill freshman Kevin Wu, discovered that it was all an act.

“I noticed some weird things about the way he acted that made me suspect he wasn’t actually blind,” Wu says. “Sometimes I would catch him checking himself out in the mirror before he went out in the morning, and he could find books in the library way easier than me. I was sure of it when I pretended to punch him in the face and he flinched. After that I reported him right away.”

NU admissions officer Abby Greenfield confessed to admitting White into Northwestern because she truly believed he was blind, explaining that Northwestern has been a need-blind school for many years.

“We worked extremely hard to make the class of 2014 the most diverse class in Northwestern history,” Greenfield says. “We even traveled to remote, previously uncharted islands to recruit students who had never even heard of the United States, much less the university. So naturally when I came across an admissions essay about a boy struggling with blindness I had to admit him. We’ve been telling people for years that Northwestern is a need-blind school, but in all that time we’ve only gotten two blind applicants. Now that we know Dave White isn’t actually blind we’re going to have to begin the search all over again.”

Greenfield also described the recent, alarming trend of students fabricating family backgrounds and maladies such as blindness on their college applications in hopes of being admitted to diverse universities.

“Just this year we had three applicants sever their own legs to become amputees, and one girl claimed she was born on Jupiter. I checked her birth certificate and she really wasn’t from outer space. It’s a shame; an alien would have rounded out the class of 2014 quite nicely.”