@chrisn21: This is information regarding the Alumni scholarship is from last year.
The shortlisting process appears to be based primarily on a) did you write an essay that stands out and gets noticed by your reader and b) your community service and similar ECs. Its different from the Regents scholarship which is based more on pure academic talent (and obviously relies on the original UC application for shortlisting). So my S who was senior class president etc won an Alumni scholarship, his classmate who was the top student with 36 ACT etc won a Regents scholarship. However, I understand that some applicants can win both scholarships (and then they stack).
Its worth noting that the Regents scholarship is vastly more useful as it gives you class and housing priority (and other things like a parking permit), while the Alumni scholarship doesn’t. Nevertheless, a $6000 scholarship is worth applying for and there are some additional benefits, like access to internships, mentoring etc.
The Alumni Association is independent of UCLA admissions. There is only a one way flow of information:
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UCLA admissions give the Alumni Association a list of some subset of applicants for the invitation email. Then the invitation is sent out and people apply for the Alumni scholarship.
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After UCLA admissions have announced their admission decisions, they give the Alumni Association a list of admitted students so they can screen out any scholarship applications from those who weren’t admitted before starting to read them.
The only time information goes the other way is when the Alumni Association tell financial aid about the awarded scholarships.
So there is no impact on the admission decision from any Alumni scholarship application. The fact that there may be correlation (depending on how selective UCLA admissions were in compiling the original list for the invitation email) is in no way causation.
For Regents, depending upon which UCLA college is reviewing the applicants for the scholarship, academics is the primary consideration for the College of Engineering and the College of Letters and Sciences so they would have access to the UC application.