Holistic Hooey

UCLA has moved to “holistic” admissions.

Starting with this year’s applicants, UCLA will change the way undergraduate applications are read and scored to allow more of an emphasis on personal achievements.

Though administrators have not said that the change in the admissions process is meant specifically to increase underrepresented minority students at UCLA, acting Chancellor Norman Abrams has said that he hopes the new process will enhance diversity.

Hmm. If it’s not meant “specifically” to increase the numbers of minorities, does that mean it is meant “generally” to do so?

Chancellor Abrams doesn’t say, but oddly he does find it necessary to say that he is a tolerant person.

“UCLA will work toward having more diversity because it’s important,” Abrams said. “It’s an important part of the social learning experience. If there is one thing I am intolerant of, it is intolerance itself.”

That’s nice to know, although it’s not clear what relevance it has to “holistic” admissions. Also, shouldn’t a great university seriously committed to “diversity” take some affirmative action to ensure that it accepts some intolerant students? After all, they exist (in large numbers, according to some) in that vaunted “global marketplace” whose demography universities are now trying to emulate.

But why would anyone think that “holistic” admissions, with its greater emphasis on “personal achievements,” would have any chance of leading to the admission of significantly more minorities? True, minorities as a group don’t do as well on standardized tests and have lower grades than other applicants to selective schools, and so it is reasonable to assume that “more of an emphasis on personal achievements” probably means less of an emphasis on academic achievements and so might have some effect on the rate of minority acceptance.

On the other hand, there is no reason to think that black or Hispanic applicants are better at personally achieving (or overcoming adversity, if that’s what personal achievement really means) than Asians or Arabs or whites or anyone else. Short of a preferences-equivalent thumb on the scale (such as granting more weight to personal achievements having to do with overcoming racism or growing up in a non-English speaking home), the proportion of minorities admitted because of their “personal achievements” should reflect their proportion of the applicants who meet the newly lowered academic threshhold. At UCLA that threshold may still not be lowered enough so that the proportion of qualifying minorities is equal to the proportion of minority high school graduates, nor is there any reason to assume the minority yield from the personal achievement admits will be greater than the yield from the regular, pre-“holistic” minority admits discussed here.

But still, it is nice to know that the Chancellor of UCLA is intolerant of intolerance.

Say What?