"Clearly not?" And you know this how?
"His intent was to mislead?" Absolutely not. His intent was to inspire struggling youth to overcome their disadvantaged backgrounds by studying and working hard so that opportunites would be opened to them. He wrote this 20 years ago in the context of starting his foundation that has provided scholarships to impoverished kids.
In context, he was the top ROTC cadet in his high school, and in case you haven't noticed, he was black -- still is, in fact. At the time, the late 60s - early 70s, there was greatly more racial discrimination than today, and it was the beginnings of a large push by most American universites/academies to locate and support promising minority candidates. It only stands to reason that he would have been checked out and solicited.
In case you are thinking, then, that he was an affirmative action doctor, consider that in his field, brain surgery, you simply can't fake it. You either have the skill to fix a child's brain or you don't; and the top hospital where he worked would not have permitted him to stay if he couldn't perform. In fact, Johns Hopkins made him the youngest head of Pediatric Neurosurgery in their history. He collaborated and teamed up with specialists from many other institutions and other countries, mostly white, but people of all colors. If his career had not been genuine, none of us would be talking about him today. And he and his wife then used much of their good fortune to try to help the underprivileged. But no good deed goes unpunished, it seems. People want to see him as someone who would intentionally mislead to make a few bucks in publishing. It's pathetic.
More than one close acquaintance of mine here in Maryland where Dr. Ben made his career in medicine know him and/or his family members. Due to my own research interests, I personally talked with him back in the 90s about the disastrous effects of illegitimacy and fatherlessness on minority youths, and he was immediately unequivocal that marriage is one of the pillars of a productive life, a point he had stressed in his autobiography from that era, Gifted Hands; or perhaps it was the second book, The Big Picture. Those books were written in no small part to influence troubled youths. He has been married for someting like 43 years to the same woman, who is a partner in their foundation work and a co-author or editor of some of his later books.
That said, he is not my top choice for president, nor my second choice. But I see no reason to trash him, when we need all the strong figures we can get on our side. No one is perfect.
He was not offered an appointment at WP http://www.cbsnews.com/news/ben-carsons-campaign-admits-he-never-applied-to-west-point/ here is one source.