We've made the startup school application reader import karma scores from News.YC, so we can consider karma as a factor. (It is a meaningful one, because it shows your contributions are valued by your peers.) It matches people based on email addresses, so if you have high karma on News.YC and you're applying to startup school, make sure the email addr in your profile is identical with the one you used in applying.
We've noticed people using forms like whatever (at) gmail in their profiles. As well as making it impossible to match user accounts with applications, this isn't necessary, because your email addr isn't displayed to anyone except to you and editors.
Here is the link for people who wants to apply: http://www.startupschool.org/