Features

University of California considers taking a broader view

By Michelle Locke The Associated Press
Wednesday November 14, 2001

OAKLAND — A proposed University of California admissions policy aims to look at prospective students as more than the sum of their transcript and test scores. 

Under the new policy, known as “comprehensive review,” students would not be judged on academics alone, but would be viewed in terms of academics plus supplemental factors such as overcoming hardship. 

UC already uses comprehensive review for some students, but campuses are required to admit at least 50 percent of students solely on academic criteria. The change would eliminate that requirement. 

Doing that would send “a strong message to K-12 schools and students that the university is looking for students who have achieved at high levels and have challenged themselves to the greatest extent possible,” UC officials say in an information packet sent to the governing board of regents. 

UC’s faculty members have approved comprehensive review admissions. A regents committee will vote on the change Wednesday. If approved, it would go to the full board on Thursday. 

Critics say they’re concerned the plan would make the admissions process a little less fair. 

“If parents and their kids cannot reliably predict their chances of admissions based on certain objective academic factors, then they will believe that it’s all a crapshoot,” said Kevin Nguyen, executive director of the American Civil Rights Institute. 

The institute was founded by Ward Connerly, the UC regent who led the move to drop the nine-campus system’s old affirmative action programs. 

Regents were skeptical when the change was first presented in October, but some indicated they could be persuaded to vote for it. 

Comprehensive review would not change the statewide pool of students deemed eligible for entry to one of UC’s eight undergraduate campuses. That is determined by meeting grade and test minimums, or by graduating in the top 4 percent of one’s high school class. 

The new rules would give campuses more leeway in selecting from the pool, which could change who gets into highly competitive Berkeley. 

Even there, the impact might not be great. 

Berkeley officials reviewed 1,000 admissions from this fall and found that all but 4 percent would have been admitted under comprehensive review. The losers under comprehensive review tended to be students who had good grades but hadn’t done much outside the classroom. 

The 50 percent minimum was adopted at the same time UC dropped race from admissions in 1995. (Previously, campuses had to admit at least 40 percent of students on academics alone.) Regents rescinded the 1995 vote in May. The vote was largely symbolic because of a 1996 law dismantling most state affirmative action programs, but did bring the academic minimum up for debate. 

Some have criticized comprehensive review as a covert way of reviving affirmative action without mentioning race. 

After race-blind admissions went into effect, enrollment of blacks and Hispanics tumbled. The figures have rebounded since then, but there has been a reshuffling, with more blacks and Hispanics going to lesser-known campuses such as UC-Riverside and fewer going to Berkeley and UCLA. 

UC officials say the new policy isn’t backdoor affirmative action because race is taken off applications before they are reviewed and the overall pool of applicants remains unchanged. They do not expect the ethnic composition of freshmen classes at any of the campuses to change substantially. 

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On the Net: 

http://www.ucop.edu/news/expanding/comprev.pdf