As a high school senior, Mike Connors applied to only one school: Boston University. Despite having an SAT score nearly 100 points lower than the average for BU’s four-year colleges, Connors was “pretty confident” he’d get in.

Connors’s mother, an assistant research professor at BU’s School of Medicine, encouraged him to attend the school. As an employee’s son, Mike would receive a substantial discount on tuition — paying just 10 percent of the regular tuition price.

Connors was accepted into the College of Communication in 2005.

Connors’ story is not uncommon. Many children of BU employees enjoy free or significantly reduced tuition — a benefit not available to other students.

In addition, Dan Golden, author of The Price of Admission: How America’s Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges — and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates, said some schools — including BU — give employees’ children special consideration in the admissions process.

“The net effect of programs like BU’s is that they put great pressure on faculty members to send their children to BU and great pressure on the admissions office to admit those children,” he told The Daily Free Press.

Although employees’ children are admitted to colleges at what Golden called a “much higher proportion,” they aren’t always as academically skilled as other students, he said.

Although BU spokesman Colin Riley said the school does not give employees’ children any admissions advantages, Director of Undergraduate Admissions Kelly Walter — who declined comment for the article — said in Golden’s book that she gives “special attention” to the employees’ children by assigning a senior admissions officer to handle their applications.

She said no children of employees are rejected without her consent.

“I may agree with the committee recommendation, or I may ask them to go back for additional information,” she said in the book. “I may say, ‘I know the family, I know the brother, I think this student can make it, let’s give him or her a chance.'”

Riley said between 190 and 200 children of employees applied to BU in 2005. Of those, 128 were accepted — an acceptance rate of 64 to 67 percent.

In The Price of Admission, Golden said BU accepted 160 out of 176 employee’s children in 2003 — an acceptance rate of 91 percent.

Children of employees make up more than 8 percent of this year’s freshman class.

According to BU Executive Vice President Joseph Mercurio, the school typically accepts about half its applicants.

He said he was not aware of any preferences given to employees’ children.

“They’re treated like anyone else,” he told The Daily Free Press.

According to BU policy, unmarried dependent children can receive 100 percent tuition remission tax-free if the parent employee was hired before 1995, and 90 percent if hired after 1995. The parent must be a full-time BU employee for at least 16 months to be eligible.

The cost of tuition at BU is $33,300 for the 2006-07 school year, according to the school’s website.

Mercurio said approximately 350 students participate in the tuition remission program each year, which would cost $11 million per year if each of these students received 100 percent tuition remission.

Golden said college employees have been unwilling to give up the tuition remission benefit, which he described as a “huge financial advantage.”

The average full-time BU professor earns $117,000 per year, according to a survey by the American Association of University Professors.

BU’s tuition remission plan is “non-portable,” meaning the children of employees who go to other colleges are ineligible to receive benefits.

With this plan, “the student might not want to go to BU but they have to under family pressure for financial reasons, and that’s not healthy,” Golden said. Some Boston-area schools do offer portable plans, according to the schools’ web sites, including Wellesley College, where employees’ children can receive a tuition grant for another school.

“We don’t have such a plan because of the cost implications,” Mercurio said. “That’s out-of-pocket cash that the university would have to absorb.”

Mercurio also said BU holds a program for all employees’ children to inform them of admissions criteria.

None of the students interviewed for this article was aware of this program.

Although Mercurio said BU will continue its tuition remission program indefinitely, Golden said he sees room for improvement.

“I think that schools need some conflict-of-interest rules to make sure faculty and administrators don’t intervene in the admissions process if their child is applying,” Golden said.

Mercurio said BU has no plans to include such rules because of the “sensitivity of the relationships that we have with our employees.”

Other area schools have similar tuition remission programs, according to schools’ websites. Eligibility for the benefit ranges from school to school.