UC: A Broader But Shallower Pool?
The Los Angeles Times reports that an admissions review board at the University of California has recommended a new freshman admissions policy “that would both broaden the pool of potential applicants but also limit the guarantees of entrance for some high-achieving students.”
Under current policy, a large group of students with strong enough grades and test scores can achieve what is called UC eligibility. They may not get into their first- or even fourth-choice school but are guaranteed a spot at a campus with room, usually UC Riverside or UC Merced. The proposed change would, in part, end that guarantee.These proposed changes are so controversial that even many faculty members oppose them, and there is a widespread fear that “chip[ping] away at the guarantee policies ... might provoke an uproar among parents and lawmakers.”
Apparently merit, rather traditionally defined, is not as unpopular among people at large as it is on campus.
Say What?
http://news.yahoo.com/s/uc/20071220/cm_uc_crlelx/op_244710&printer=1;_ylt=AndH48VfsHvuVsFZhKuDFrSZts8F
How To Make an Un-Level Playing Field More Un-Level
Larry ElderThu Dec 20, 3:00 AM ET
Move over, Martin Luther King Jr., and your desire for a colorblind society. The University of California system prefers a color-coordinated one.
UC's Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools (BOARS) wants to change the admission rules to their 10 schools, including lowering the minimum high school GPA to 2.8 and removing the requirement of two SAT Subject Tests.
Current policy makes the top 12.5 percent of each senior class — based on a minimum 3.0 GPA, their scores on either the SAT Reasoning Test or the ACT with Writing, and their scores on two SAT Subject Tests — eligible for admission to a UC school.
But, a large percentage of poor, black and Hispanic students, according to BOARS, never take the SAT Subject Tests, shutting them out from eligibility. Lowering the GPA and dropping the requirement for two SAT Subject Tests increases the number of students eligible for admission, giving the universities a larger, more minority-laden pool from which to choose.
Yet this proposed policy adversely affects students, many of them Asian American students (formerly known as minorities). And doing away with the SAT Subject Tests — where students pick their two best subjects from a variety of tests in English, history, mathematics, science and language — inflicts the most damage.
PLEASE READ MORE....
http://news.yahoo.com/s/uc/20071220/cm_uc_crlelx/op_244710&printer=1;_ylt=AndH48VfsHvuVsFZhKuDFrSZts8F
Posted by: E | December 22, 2007 11:56 PM