Race Not A Factor! (Except At Berkeley And UCLA)

In a news article that is virtually dripping with defense of the University of California’s admissions policies, the Los Angeles Times asserts that “Overall, Race No Factor for Low-Scoring UC Applicants.” (Via Howard Bashman. See here for my discussion of the controversy over UC’s acceptance of large numbers of low-scoring applicants.)

Latinos with low SAT scores are admitted to the University of California at rates only slightly higher than whites and Asians, while blacks who score poorly are significantly less likely to get in, according to a Times analysis.

All told, the groups underrepresented on UC campuses — African Americans, Latinos and Native Americans — are admitted with below-average SAT scores at the same rates as whites and Asians.

….

Taken together, low-scoring blacks, Latinos and Native Americans were just as likely to be admitted as Asians and whites. The admission rate for both groups was 63%.

In all, 67% of low-scoring Latino applicants were admitted to at least one UC campus, compared with 65% of Asians and 60% of whites.

But only 49% of black applicants with similarly low scores were admitted.

Well, not quite. Or rather, the headline and lead are accurate, but misleading. One has to read quite far in the long article to discover that the charges that sparked the controversy — that the flagship institutions of Berkeley and UCLA did in fact admit much higher proportions of low scoring minorities — were quite accurate.

The picture was different at the university’s two most competitive campuses, where Latinos and blacks — who make up a smaller share of the student body relative to their numbers in the state’s population — were more likely to be accepted.

UC Berkeley, the original focus of the admissions debate, admitted low-scoring blacks and Latinos at twice the rate of Asians and whites with similar scores.

UCLA was about a quarter more likely to admit low-scoring African Americans and Latinos than whites and Asians.

The article goes to extremes to minimize even this buried admission.

Both campuses were much more selective than others, however. Berkeley accepted only 8% of all low-scoring applicants and UCLA 7%. In all, about 1,500 low-scoring students—a relatively small number — were admitted at the two campuses over the two-year period.

Despite the length of this article — over 2200 words — neither the numbers nor the differential rate of admission to Berkeley and UCLA for low-scoring minorities is given. Thus we are told that Berkeley admitted “low-scoring blacks and Latinos at twice the rate of Asians and whites with similar scores” and also that Berkeley accepted “only 8% of all low-scoring applicants” (emphasis added). We are pointedly not told what the admission rates were for low-scoring whites and Asians or for blacks and Hispanics, nor the absolute numbers.

When critics of race preferences argue that high standards and thus relatively fewer minority admissions to Berkeley and UCLA are not discriminatory because minorities are able to attend other, less selective campuses of the University of California system, they are often called racist. Now the Los Angeles Times argues that, despite highly disproportionate admissions of low-scoring blacks and Hispanics over similarly low-scoring whites and Asians at Berkeley and UCLA, there is no discrimination because in the UC system as a whole low-scorers from all groups are accepted at about the same rate.

Nice try.

UPDATE – Thanks to Mickey Kaus for his nice plug. Go read his discussion, not because he mentioned my post but because he added a whole bunch of stuff that I’d have said if I’d been smart enough.

Say What? (11)

  1. Laura November 4, 2003 at 8:49 pm | | Reply

    I’m a little confused. The first set of quotes seems to equate low scores with below-average scores. By definition, half of all scores are below average. Unless by “below average”, below the national average is meant, which could be well below the average score of successful applicants. Otherwise, I would think the “low” term ought to refer to maybe the bottom 33% or 25%. Wonder if that would change the picture.

  2. John Rosenberg November 4, 2003 at 8:55 pm | | Reply

    Laura – In the context of this debate, and this article, “low-scoring” means applicants to UC whose SAT scores range from 600 to 1000. The last entering average at Berkeley was 1337.

  3. Funky Ph.D. November 4, 2003 at 9:46 pm | | Reply

    This is a bit off the subject (and probably covered somewhere else in your excellent site), but since the passage of proposition 209, Asian enrollment at Berkeley has shot up, and now stands at 44% of the incoming freshman class. See the ethnic/racial breakdown at http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2003/08/20_fall.shtml. Statewide, the 2000 census reports the percentage of the population self-identified as Asian is 10.77. This means that Asians are over-represented at Berkeley (assuming that the “diversity” of the campus should reflect that of the state) by a factor of more than four. Any thoughts?

  4. John Rosenberg November 4, 2003 at 10:28 pm | | Reply

    Many thoughts, Funky. The LAT article at issue, if I’m remembering it correctly, says that roughly 15% of Calif. high school graduates are Asian. It also says:

    In the UC system, whites still make up the biggest share of the undergraduate population. According to 2002 figures, they constitute 37% of those students. Next come Asians, at 33%; Latinos, at 13%; and African Americans, at 3%.

    At UC Berkeley, Asians are the largest group, at 38%, followed by whites, at 30%; Latinos, at 10%; and African Americans, 4%.

    Asians also are the biggest group at UCLA, at 35%, followed by whites, at 33%, Latinos, at 15%, and African Americans, 4%.

    The article reports the ethnic breakdown in the following manner:

    Among the state’s major racial and ethnic categories, only Asians attend UC schools in percentages that exceed their share of California’s public high school graduates. According to 2002 figures, Asians account for 15% of the state’s 325,895 public high school graduates. Latinos represent 33% of such graduates, and blacks come to 7%. The biggest group, whites, accounted for 43%.

    That said, it has long been clear that “diversity,” as currently practiced and preached, would require a lower ceiling on the number of Asians admitted to Calif. schools.

    One other item: in their new book that I’ve been touting lately (NO EXCUSES), the Thernstroms present data showing that the performance gap between whites and Asians is as big or bigger than the one between blacks and whites.

  5. Richard Nieporent November 4, 2003 at 11:09 pm | | Reply

    This subject was addressed 12 years ago in the book, “Illiberal Education”, by Dinesh D’Souza. In Chapter 2 of the book, “More Equal Than Others – Admissions Policy at Berkeley”, he discussed the quota system that was implemented at Berkeley.

    “Diversity is a central principle of the Berkeley admissions process. Prodded by the state legislature, the university seeks to achieve this goal by shaping its student body to roughly approximate the proportions of blacks, Hispanics, whites, Asian Americans and other groups in the general population”.

    However, some minorities were more equal than others. The effect of this policy was to discriminate against Asians in admissions since they were “overrepresented” in the group with top SAT scores. When the quota policy became public, the University was forced to rescind the policy.

  6. Richard Cook November 5, 2003 at 2:17 pm | | Reply

    Laura-

    I think your talking about the mean and not the average.

  7. Anonymous November 5, 2003 at 2:45 pm | | Reply

    Actually, I was thinking of the median. Mean and average are the same thing. But in a nice, symmetrical normal distribution, which I’ll bet the SAT scores arrange themselves in, the median and the mean fall pretty much on top of each other.

  8. Laura November 5, 2003 at 2:47 pm | | Reply

    that was me

  9. Cobb November 6, 2003 at 2:16 am | | Reply

    Race & SATs (Only) Again

    Apparently, too many non-whites got into UC again.

  10. Number 2 Pencil November 7, 2003 at 11:10 am | | Reply

    The UC SAT flap, continued

    I’ve recently posted a few times on the SAT score controversies currently swirling around some of the University of California campuses; in particular, Berkeley, Los Angeles, and San Diego The UC president, Robert Dynes, has publicly defended their adm…

  11. Damien March 19, 2004 at 4:35 pm | | Reply

    Has Berkeley or UCLA made any type of effort to seek and recruit eligible minority students, or has their admission policy been made to “control” the face of the University.

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