Gina Grant college admissions controversy

1995 Harvard admissions incident

Gina Grant (born 1976) is an American woman who gained notoriety when her admission to Harvard University was rescinded after it became known that four years earlier, at age 14, she had killed her mother. Controversy ensued over questions including whether she was obligated to disclose crimes committed as a juvenile; whether she had escaped justice for the killing; and whether the decisions, made by Harvard and several other universities that reconsidered her admission in the wake of the revelations, were justified.

Gina Grant was the daughter of Charles Grant and Dorothy Mayfield, both of whom lived in Lexington, South Carolina. She had one sister, her elder by nine years. Gina's father died of lung cancer when Gina was 11 years old. Grant changed her story several times. Initially, she told police that her mother attacked her while holding a knife and then stabbed herself in the throat. When the candlestick was discovered, Grant changed her story, eventually telling the police that she had committed the killing in self defense. She was charged with murder. After she was featured in an April 2 Boston Globe article about students who had overcome difficult circumstances, Harvard and The Globe received anonymous communications containing old news articles about Grant's mother's death. Harvard rescinded Grant's admission the next day, referring only to a list of general reasons that admissions are sometimes rescinded. Harvard refused Grant's request to meet with the admissions committee. an article in the Chicago Tribune,
and Harvard Law professors Charles Ogletree and Alan Dershowitz also criticized Harvard's action. Columbia University and Barnard College also rescinded acceptances they had extended to Grant, but Tufts University allowed their acceptance of her to stand, and Grant entered Tufts as part of its class of 1999.