OPAQUE PROCESS
The UCLA admissions results are in and, as the LAT headline puts it, they don't say much: High, Low SATs Not Decisive at UCLA. In other words, who knows how they decide who gets in? From the story:
UC officials have defended their admissions practices at Berkeley and elsewhere, saying that the SAT, a widely used test, is a weak indicator of future college performance.
The system over the past two years has shifted to a procedure called comprehensive review to consider freshman applicants, an approach that places less emphasis on test scores and grades and more on other factors, including leadership, socioeconomic challenges and personal achievement.
"Looking at any one factor, such as SAT scores, is contrary to the whole concept of comprehensive review," said Tom Lifka, who oversees admissions as assistant vice chancellor of student academic services. "This shows us that it's just not a very relevant way of looking at things."
According to UCLA figures, 1,663 applicants with SAT scores totaling more than 1400 were rejected for this fall's freshman class, and 1,646 with SATs at that level were turned away the year before....
UCLA accepted 407 applicants for this fall's class with SATs below 1000. The year before, the Westwood campus offered admission to 525 students with SATs below 1000, including seven with scores ranging from 701 to 800. The average score nationally is slightly above 1,000....
UCLA officials also said that students with high SAT scores who were rejected by the campus were turned away for such reasons as having comparatively low grade point averages. Other rejected students applied to especially competitive programs in the School of Engineering and Applied Science, the School of Arts and Architecture or the School of Theatre, Film and Television, they said.
Still others were rejected because they failed to meet the higher standards for out-of-state applicants or because they fell short in the "personal achievement" and "life challenges" criteria used by the admissions office.
Nobody knows whether, as some suspect, the new process is a backdoor way of reinstituting racial preferences. Nobody knows because the process is opaque. That's fine for a private school, but public universities owe applicants more transparent criteria.
The full story is here.