By Noah Grand
Daily Bruin Reporter
A pending University of California admissions process, while
designed to give more thorough reviews to applicants, does not
include any mechanism to ensure uniform criteria are used.
The UC regents and systemwide Academic Senate are debating using
a system of comprehensive admissions, in which all applicants would
be reviewed based on academic and personal achievements as well as
life challenges. If the system is approved by the two entities when
they vote on it within a month, the admissions process could be
changed by December.
But Tom Lifka, interim director of admissions at UCLA, does not
expect academic achievements to be given any more or less weight
than in the current system of admissions.
Nicholas Entrikin, chair of the Committee of Undergraduate
Admissions and Relations with Schools, said UCLA’s concept of
comprehensive admissions does not place any given weight on any of
the three areas of review ““ academic achievement, personal
achievement and life challenges ““ but said academic
achievement will still be the primary factor in
decision-making.
Under comprehensive admissions, a student with high academic
achievement would get into UCLA “unless their personal
achievements and life challenges are very low, especially their
personal achievements,” Lifka said. If a student had a lower
academic achievement ranking, they would need more personal
achievement and life challenges to gain admission, he said.
“Our goals are to be more sensitive to individual
circumstances of students and recognize different forms of
achievement and progress,” Entrikin said.
The office of admissions is in charge of reviewing applications
and deciding who is admitted, based on the criteria provided by the
Academic Senate.
If comprehensive admissions is approved, academic achievement
would still be measured in terms of high school GPA, standardized
test scores, the number of honors or advanced placement courses
taken and the strength of a student’s high school program,
Entrikin said.
The same criteria for academic achievement are used with the
current tiered admissions system, under which 50-75 percent of
applicants must be accepted on academic achievement alone. The rest
of the applicants are chosen based on factors such as economic
hardship and special achievements.
Lifka said all application readers will be trained to ensure
they follow the admissions criteria created by the Academic Senate
before reading applications. Once they start reading applications,
staff leaders will review a few of each reader’s decisions to
ensure readers are reviewing applications correctly.
Currently, 20-25 full-time admissions officers will review
applications. Lifka said an additional 20-25 part time readers will
be hired. He also expects a dozen professors and high school
counselors to volunteer in the review process.
If approved, one reader would review an applicant’s life
challenges while two reviewers would rate an applicant’s
academic and personal achievements. After these reviews, the
readers would make decisions based on who they think will succeed
at UCLA.
John Edmond, chair of the Academic Senate, said this puts more
pressure on readers to make fair decisions, and human judgment must
be trusted. He said experience is the best way to gain good
judgment in admissions, and hiring quality admissions staff
won’t be easy.
He added that appropriately training readers and ensuring the
Academic Senate uses the correct criteria in admissions is more
difficult under the short timetable.
“We’re under constraints of doing all of this in one
year,” Edmond said. “It’s not possible. Readers
can’t get trained overnight.”
He said any changes to the admissions process will only be
interim changes, and that UCLA will be working on implementing
comprehensive review for two or three years to get the best
admissions system possible.
The state legislature, meanwhile, is trying to determine what
effects comprehensive review will have on the admissions process.
State Sen. Richard Alacrón, D-San Fernando Valley, chair of
the senate committee on College and University Admissions and
Outreach, is reviewing the progress of comprehensive admissions at
each campus according to Jose Hernandez, the committee’s
policy analyst.
“Sen. Alacrón wants to know if UC schools are
adequately measuring student’s success in high school in
terms of potential,” Hernandez said.
If approved by the regents and the academic senate, each campus
using comprehensive admissions will have to design a way of
implementing it and get it approved by that campus’ academic
senate.
“We have to make sure that control over admissions stays
here in the Academic Senate,” Edmond said. “What we do
with comprehensive admissions has to be done with the highest
quality in terms of design and implementation.”
Entrikin’s Academic Senate committee worked through the
summer to decide how UCLA will implement comprehensive admissions
after the passage of RE-28, which repealed SP-1. SP-1, passed by
the regents in 1995, mandated that 50-75 percent of all students
must be chosen based solely on these academic criteria in addition
to banning affirmative action in admissions decisions.