No single person currently reads the entirety of a
student’s application to UCLA. Instead, the application is
divided into sections, each section is read by several different
people, and the scores of those sections are compiled. Based on
those scores, an applicant is either admitted or denied.
With this admissions policy, it is no surprise that UCLA has
developed a reputation as a large public school where students are
treated as a number.
The people who read and score an application have knowledge of
only one of the following: academic review, personal achievements
or life challenges.
The reader who studies your grades, test scores and high school
curriculum doesn’t know about your extracurriculars,
employment, community service or awards. The reader who considers
your socioeconomic status, your family’s education levels and
whether you grew up in a disadvantaged neighborhood knows only
those factors and nothing else.
This policy doesn’t allow each part of the application to
tell the whole story.
Perhaps an applicant had to work through high school to help pay
rent and so has slightly lower grades. Perhaps an applicant could
not take SAT prep classes and so did not perform as well on the
test.
But in a system where a student’s application is separated
into several sections, these factors can never be considered.
The administration is considering a “holistic
approach” to the application-review process, which involves
each application being read in full by several people, which makes
more sense as an effective admissions procedure.
It is almost absurd that applications have not been read this
way so far.
Though the full implications and results of the transition to a
holistic approach will not be clear until the policy is enacted,
the proposal is a commendable attempt at progress.
When Proposition 209 passed in 1996 and abolished affirmative
action from the admissions process in California, UCLA accepted the
resulting change without doing much to compensate, allowing
admissions of underrepresented minorities to slip in the following
years.
But under the tutelage of acting Chancellor Norman Abrams, UCLA
has the opportunity to try out a new admissions policy that has the
potential to be much more fair.
We would like to commend Abrams and the others involved in the
admissions-policy change on their work toward improving the way
UCLA considers its applicants.
In only two months, the man who many expected to simply hold
over UCLA until a permanent chancellor was found actually took some
of the most meaningful and bold action our university has seen in
some time.
But before we go too far in congratulating the administration,
we would like to ask why it took so long.
Why did it take 10 years since Proposition 209 for UCLA to find
a new policy?
Why did it take a barrage of negative media coverage to kick
UCLA into action?
Why did it take 10 years and an incoming freshman class with
only 96 black students for UCLA to even try something new?
The holistic approach to admissions can and likely will be
called many different things by opponents: a way to get around
Proposition 209, a socioeconomic version of affirmative action, a
relaxed admissions standard.
We will have to wait for next year’s accepted applicants
before we can confirm our hopes for this new policy.
But at the very least, it is commendable that UCLA is trying
something out.
Unsigned editorials represent a majority opinion of the
Daily Bruin Editorial Board.