<p>
OK, and IANAL, but if you’re suing someone, there has to be a tort - a legal cause of action that allows you to recover damages from someone for something they did.</p>
<p>What tort would allow you to sue over being rejected from a graduate school, theorizing that it’s because you have this negative mark on your record? If you can’t answer that question… then, more or less, there is no legally-cognizable harm and your lawsuit wouldn’t make it past the first set of briefs and a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim.</p>
<p>Credit scores are an entirely different animal, regulated in part by the federal government under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, 15 USC 1681 et seq. So you can’t compare the two.</p>
<p>
No. Why would they have a case? A student’s past behavior is pretty clearly a fair topic of inquiry as to their suitability for advanced studies. The student did something wrong in the past. Is it harsh to reject them from a program for that? Perhaps. But when you’re talking about highly-competitive programs with far more applicants than slots, small things that separate candidates from each other gain outsized importance.</p>
<p>Bottom line: There is no law that says graduate programs can’t consider personal behavior and conduct records in their admissions process. Ergo, this person can’t sue a graduate program for doing something that’s not illegal.</p>