How [University of California] is rigging the admissions process

Los Angeles Times ^ | September 7, 2008 | Heather Mac Donald

[reaganaut1]

Ever since California voters banned the use of racial preferences in government and education in 1996, the University of California has tried to engineer admissions systems that would replicate the effect of explicit racial quotas while appearing color-blind.

To some observers, the legality of those efforts has long been suspect, but proof of wrongdoing has been hard to come by. Now a professor who sat on UCLA's committee on undergraduate admissions is charging that the school is deliberately taking race into account when deciding which students to admit. The university has refused to give him access to the data to test his claim, prompting the professor -- political science faculty member Tim Groseclose -- to resign from the school's admissions oversight committee in protest.

UCLA's stonewalling is misguided and futile. Though the University of California has always jealously guarded information on its students' qualifications and its admissions procedures, enough details have come out over the last 10 years to suggest that race remains a factor in many parts of the system. More important, hard evidence is accumulating that enrolling students in a college for which they are academically unprepared does them a disservice.

The story begins with the passage of Proposition 209, the 1996 anti-quota ballot initiative, which reduced the number of African Americans admitted to campuses across the state and sent UC officials into crisis mode. They began implementing a series of admissions changes intended to bring underqualified blacks and Latinos back to the system's most demanding campuses.

They tried a preference scheme for low-income students, but it backfired when it boosted the number of Eastern European and Vietnamese admissions -- not the sort of "diversity" the university had in mind. Administrators cut the low-income preferences in half and went back to the drawing board.

[SpaceBar]

Typical admission essay question:

Use the word “yo” in a sentence.

[Steely Tom]

How does this work, anyway?

Oh, wait, maybe I can guess.

On the application form, instead of a line preceeded by the words "Address of Principle Residence" it says "Weah Yo Crib Be At." Something along those lines?

[Steely Tom]

Oops. Principal.

Never mind.

slinks away

[reaganaut1]

‘How does this work, anyway?

Oh, wait, maybe I can guess.’

You don’t need to guess — see the following quote.

“Under comprehensive review, a student’s academic qualifications are boosted or demoted according to various factors, including his or her life situation — whether he or she lives in a high-crime neighborhood, has been a shooting victim, is a single parent or comes from a single-parent home, for example.”

[yobid]

UCLA - University of Caucasians Latinos and Asians!

(wife is a USC alumni - University of Spoiled Children)

[longtermmemmory]

they game it so that you include a reference to your skin color in the application.

it is akin to giving your father as your family contact so they know you come from an intact family (or imply so)

also pictures help.

[Tzimisce]

I’ve been rejected by UCLA four times.

Any suggestions on how I could get in?

[ucsd1974]

This story has several layers beginning with the fact that the California government(public) school system is in the control of teacher unions. Schwarzenegger's brief attempt to correct this was crushed by a barrage of ads financed by the unions (truthfully financed by the taxpayers) that basically accused him of child neglect. Parental choice in school selection is vehemently opposed by the teachers who fear competition. To a disproportionate degree blacks confined to under-performing government schools and become the victims of the soft bigotry of low expectations. The UC system's response to an excessive number of undesirable Asians is to discriminate (judging by the color of their skin and not the content of their cranium) against them in favor of those with the politically correct pigmentation. As in medieval days they take their selected victims& and throw in the moat to see if they float.

The problem begins with a school system that is costly and does not give the taxpayers their money's worth. It produces graduates ill prepared for the next level of competition. UC's discriminatory admissions system simply exacerbates the problem.

[scrabblehack]

Be glad they rejected you.