From the Bakke decision
in 1978 to Ward Connerly's campaign for Proposition 209 in 1996,
admissions has been the hot-button issue in California education.
Last October, John Moores, chair of the UC Board of Regents and
a major donor at UCSD, fired the latest salvo in the ongoing cultural
war, when he criticized the “comprehensive review” process, particularly
its implementation at Berkeley. UC president Robert Dynes responded
by asking the UC Task Force on Eligibility and Admissions to produce
a study of the admissions process. The results published on March
8, 2004, showed that in 2003, Blacks and Chicano/Latinos were admitted
at a higher rate than predicted by a statistical model, while Asian
Americans and Whites were admitted at slightly lower rates. This
prompted Dynes to release a statement saying “I remain concerned
about a few presently unexplained differences in admit rates of
similar students by race/ethnicity.”
On March 12, Moores wrote
an opinion piece in Forbes magazine accusing Berkeley of using a
“fuzzy” admissions policy. “How did the University get away with
discriminating so blatantly against Asians?” he wrote. “Through
an admissions policy with the vague term comprehensive review.”
On March 18, the Board of Regents voted 8-6 to pass a resolution
censoring Moores for the Forbes piece and reaffirming comprehensive
review.
While the arguments continue,
we have set out to explain how the implementation of comprehensive
review works at UCSD, and also to demystify the admissions process.
On paper, the two applicants
look almost identical—and they look like the kind of kids that any
college would be thrilled to admit. They are both outstanding students
with 4.0 grade point averages, and they both took rigorous course
loads at competitive suburban high schools. Student B scored an
impressive 1360 on the SAT I—well above the 1288 average for matriculating
University of California, San Diego freshmen in 2003. Student A
scored 1320. There's no question that both of these students would
thrive in the classroom at UCSD.
But in mid-March, Student
B was among the 16,000 applicants who received an acceptance letter
from the University, while Student A was denied a place. The reason:
a thorough review of both applications revealed that Student B spent
three hours a week volunteering at an animal shelter. These were
both real cases, but that tiny bit of extra oomph in Student B's
dossier made all the difference. A talent for the violin, a learning
disability overcome, or a low-income family would have had the same
effect.
The catch phrase in action
here is “comprehensive review,” a controversial three-year-old admissions
directive for the University of California's seven selective undergraduate
campuses. It was designed to expand the University's definition
of merit beyond academics, which might also result in the provision
of better access to UC for economically disadvantaged and first-generation
college students. Test scores and grades are crucial to identifying
bright students who can handle the work at an elite school. But
when you have the luxury of choosing from among a group of qualified
applicants, you pick those who will bring leadership, rich and varied
life experiences, creativity and diversity to the college community.
Or so say proponents of comprehensive review. “Straight-A students
are not always the most perfect candidates,” says Nancy Nieto, a
guidance counselor at Eastlake High School in Chula Vista, one of
80 outside readers, typically high school guidance counselors from
a range of private and public schools, who vet applications for
UCSD. “The students who do nothing but study often get lost when
they go to college. But students who are involved in different organizations
in high school will end up being contributing members of the college
as well. If you limit it to grades, you're missing a whole lot.”
Opponents, however, see
an underlying political agenda: to circumvent the 1996 state law
banning affirmative action. They argue that socioeconomic background
and personal hardships, now integral aspects of the admissions process,
are little more than ways to boost minority enrollment. As conservative
columnist Linda Chavez put it in the Chicago Sun-Times: “The idea
is that Black and Hispanic applicants will be more likely to have
overcome poverty, discrimination, family breakdown, crime-infested
neighborhoods, overcrowding, and a host of other barriers to academic
success. If the University gives them extra points for having beaten
the odds, it will help make up for lower average grades and test
scores among Black and Hispanic students.”
The most vociferous and
influential critic of comprehensive review has been John Moores,
owner of the San Diego Padres and chair of the UC Board of Regents,
who has joked that the system should be called “compassionate review.”
A 159-page report issued last fall (which Moores paid for out of
his own pocket) raised serious questions about comprehensive review,
particularly as it has been practiced at Berkeley. Moores pointed
out that more than 3,200 students with SAT scores above 1400 were
denied admission to Berkeley in 2002, while 374 applicants with
SAT scores below 1000 were admitted. This kind of inequity, Moores
says, has had a deleterious effect on the academic prestige of UC,
and sets the low-scoring students up to fail. “In an effort to achieve
some socioeconomic and geographic diversity in admissions,” he wrote,
“it may well be that the UC admissions system has evolved into a
complex and unwieldy process, which is now poorly understood by
applicants and UC administrators.”
Of course, private universities
from Pomona to Princeton have always hand-picked their students
based on a wide range of academic and nonacademic criteria, with
no damage to their prestige. But selectors at private universities
don't need to justify to taxpayers why—and how—they chose the juggler
from the inner city with the SAT score of 1200 over the suburban
math whiz with a perfect 1600. Public schools, like UC, have an
obligation to do just that. The system that has emerged is intricate,
complicated and rigorous. Each UC approaches the admissions process
in a slightly different manner, and in the case of UCSD, the process
is almost completely transparent.
In 1960, the California state
legislature endorsed the Master Plan for Higher Education, which
stipulated that the University of California would henceforth be
operated as
an elite institution reserved
for the top 12.5 percent of California high school students; the
California State universities would be open to the top third of
graduating seniors; and the community colleges would be available
to all. Today, only students who fall in the highest-performing
group—measured by grades and test scores—are eligible for admission
to a UC campus. Before they will even be considered, applicants
to schools like UCSD have already distinguished themselves academically:
They are all “smart.”
The question, then, is
this: How do you select a freshman class from among the eligible
thousands? For many years, all the UC schools were able to accommodate
every eligible student who wanted to enroll except Berkeley and
UCLA (who had to “select” from an overabundance of qualified students).
Last year, every UC campus except Riverside (which is expected to
become selective next year) had more applicants than openings—often
many more. UCSD, which became selective in 1986, had 43,438 applicants
for a class of 3,799 in 2003. To fill that class, they accepted
16,000 students—just under 40 percent of those who applied. (The
fact that each student makes multiple applications means that three-quarters
of them will finally pick one of their other selections).
Until 2001, UCSD selected
roughly half of its freshman class based on academics alone. Applicants
were ranked on the basis of grades and test scores, then the admissions
office scrolled down the list until it had filled half of the total
slots. To fill the rest of the spaces, they factored in additional
criteria, including leadership, special talents and, until 1995,
race and ethnicity. In fact, UCSD has used comprehensive review
for many years—but only to consider a portion of its applications.
Then, in 2001, UC president
Richard Atkinson proposed that the system's selective campuses begin
reading all of the applications they received. The Board of Admissions
and Relations with Schools (BOARS), a systemwide committee of the
UC academic senate charged with making policy recommendations on
admissions, wrote up a list of 14 guidelines laying out exactly
what criteria schools must take into consideration—though not how
much weight to give them. It was left up to the faculty of the individual
campuses to decide how to implement the new rules.
At Berkeley—historically
the most selective UC—every file is now assigned a single score
between one (“emphatically recommend admission”) to 5 (“recommend
deny.”) The weight given to the various factors listed in the BOARS
guidelines “floats,” which means that one extraordinary attribute
or gift can conceivably compensate for a shortfall in other areas.
UCLA, on the other hand, does three separate evaluations of a student—one
focuses on the student's academic record, the second is an assessment
of personal achievement, encompassing extracurricular activities,
and the third measures “life challenges”—like growing up on an isolated
farm, or overcoming a disadvantage. UCLA then balances the three
evaluations so that a student with low academic scores, for instance,
will have to have exceedingly high ratings in the area of life challenges
and personal achievement to be considered for admission.
The system at UCSD is both
more rigid and more transparent. (And given the school's historic
strength in science and engineering, it's not surprising that they
came up with a quantitative approach.) Based on a strictly standardized
scrutiny of the applications, every student is appointed a score
between 0 and 11,100, and that score determines whether they get
in. To arrive at the score, UCSD admissions officers work down a
tightly-controlled and straightforward checklist.
Here's how it works: In
November, when the admissions office at UCSD begins to receive applications,
data on the students' grades, test scores, high school ranking,
and honors courses are fed into a computer that generates a so-called
“academic index.” This is a hard number quantifying a student's
academic achievement. Student A, in the real-life example that opened
this story, had an academic index of 7,060; Student B's was 7,220.
With 8,200 out of 11,100 possible points reserved for academics,
the system is heavily weighted toward grades and tests. Last year,
it was entirely possible for a stellar student to get into UCSD
on academics alone. Our two applicants came close.
However, neither of them
received any points at all for so-called “socioeconomic factors,”
which attempt to account for a student's background. A set number
of points is given to applicants from low-income families (from
0 to 300) or graduating from disadvantaged high schools (0 to 300).
A student may also receive points (again, 0 to 300) for being the
first member of her family to attend college. “Where so much is
based on academics upfront, this is how we put the achievement in
context,” says BOARS chairman Barbara Sawrey, a professor in UCSD's
Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. “But we don't even look
at context without the academic strength to begin with.”
There are six additional
categories that UCSD studies under the rubric of “personal characteristics
and extracurricular achievements.” To make these evaluations, the
admissions office, in addition to its own staff, brings in those
80 outside readers, who are trained to quickly scan applications
for specific criteria. The readers are looking for evidence of unusual
talents, awards and experiences that may generate additional points—up
to 1,700 total. A track record of demonstrated leadership is worth
up to 300 points. There's not much flexibility in how they interpret
the data: the president of a club gets 150 points; a student body
president, 300. Period. Special talents—excellence at the oboe,
a talent for chess—are worth up to 300 points. Volunteer service
and participation in motivational or enrichment programs are similarly
scored. (This is where Student B got her crucial 300 points.)
A final category, called
personal challenges—which has been roundly assailed by critics of
comprehensive review—serves as a catch-all for powerful or transformative
life events that don't fit anywhere else, but suggest that the student
has been particularly resilient or resourceful. “It could be a negative
experience that impacted a kid, like shootings in school, or the
death of a parent,” says Nathan Evans, associate director of UCSD
Admissions. “Or it might be a student who has traveled and spent
time in a vastly different culture, returns home, and initiates
a community organization to promote cross-cultural dialogue. It
really covers a broad range of experience.” Personal challenges
can garner up to 500 points, though the majority of candidates—including
students A and B—receive none at all.
Each application is examined
twice, once by a member of the UCSD admissions staff, and once by
one of the 80 outside readers. The two readings virtually always
come up with an identical score. To be absolutely fair, readers
are trained to know exactly what activities get what number of points
so there won't be discrepancies between applications. “This is not
a personal judgment on the applicant, and it is not subjective,”
says admissions director Mae Brown. “It is as close to scientific
as we can make it.”
The reader-generated score
is then added to the academic and socioeconomic numbers, and students
are ranked accordingly. (When two readers disagree, the application
is sent to a third reader to break the tie.) This year, students,
who scored 7,456 or above were admitted.
The results of this culling
tend to be fairly predictable. “Occasionally there are surprises,”
says Sarah Pruden, a
college-career specialist
at Tamalpais High School in Mill Valley—where roughly 20 percent
of the students go on to UC. “But there aren't many. I generally
think these colleges know what they're doing.”
To explain those occasional
“surprises,” in the weeks following notification, all UCSD admissions
officers work the phones. The University is prepared to tell every
disappointed student by exactly how many points he or she missed
becoming a Triton. “We can review a file, and say, well, your score
was 6,000 and you missed the cut by 1,482 points. We can say, you
didn't have any points for public service, and you had no points
for special talents and awards,” says Brown. “We provide that kind
of specificity. It's very hectic, we receive hundreds of phone calls,
but we feel that every one of those students is entitled to know
why he or she was not admitted.”
It's too soon to draw any
firm conclusions from three years of comprehensive review, but most
of the hard statistics have been modestly encouraging. The students
admitted under the system seem to be flourishing: attrition rates
and grades have held steady. “We're continuing to see increases
in the academic qualifications of incoming classes at the same time
that we're seeing broadening of the types of
students we get,” says Sawrey.
“We're seeing more first-
generation college students
and more low-income students without sacrificing academic quality.
And that, to me,
signals success.”
No admissions system will
ever be perfect. There will always be kids who walk away wondering
why they didn't get into the college of their choice. Meanwhile,
the fierce political and philosophical debate about who exactly
is entitled to a top-notch state-funded college education continues.
Jennifer Reese
is a freelance writer, who lives in Northern California. She has
written for Stanford and Dartmouth magazines.
|
