PHILADELPHIA – Along with SAT scores and extra-curricular activities, college-bound students increasingly are being asked to divulge information that may not be so flattering: their arrest and discipline records.

Since late summer, the Common Application, a form used by about 300 institutions, has asked students and guidance counselors whether the applicant has ever been convicted of a crime or disciplined at school.

Kids with rocky pasts may not make it beyond 12th grade.

In an effort to weed out troublemakers before they hit campus, colleges with their own forms also are requiring prospective students to disclose behavioral black marks. More are contemplating it.

The University of Pennsylvania put its admissions policy under review after the discovery in January that a 25-year-old child molester taking graduate courses was commuting from his Bucks County, Pa., prison cell. Saint Joseph’s University will ask about applicants’ misdeeds beginning next year.

“It’s an issue that’s exploding,” said Timothy Mann, dean of student affairs at Babson College, who is writing his doctoral dissertation on the subject.

The debate over whether to screen and for what is contentious. Opponents cite privacy issues and the risk of penalizing offenders twice. Education encourages rehabilitation, argues the United States Student Association, the nation’s largest student group.

“Are we now putting institutions of higher education in the position of dispensing post-judicial punishment?” Barmak Nassirian of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers asked.

Offenders can still slip in. “No background check is foolproof,” cautioned Stephanie Hughes, a professor at the University of Northern Kentucky and security expert who owns RiskAware, which runs background checks on college employees.

Federal law prevents most schools from releasing educational records _ including disciplinary information _ without a parental approval. Counselors can leave the questions blank, a spokesman for the Common Application said. And schools don’t always know about the trouble students get into off campus.

Where Mark McGrath, president of the New Jersey School Counselor Association, works, the few kids who have had an incident tend to admit their wrongdoings.

“We try to put it in the best light we can” on the application, said McGrath, a counselor at Lawrence High School in Lawrenceville, N.J. “We’re the advocates for the child.”

Access to more accurate information and increased expectations about college involvement in students’ lives have spurred the trend toward preadmission screening, Mann said.

Though campus crime has not appreciably increased since 2003, according to the U.S. Department of Education, a few high-profile crimes committed by students with rap sheets have led institutions to reexamine their admissions process. The Common Application added its inquiries at the request of schools concerned about liability, executive director Rob Killion said.

Students are warned not to omit information. If they’re caught lying, they’re disqualified. Administrators believe most comply.

• Kathy Boccella-The Philadelpia Inquirer