<p>Pluzzhe! I did not mischaracterize or twist your statements, as I quoted the entire paragraph and posted clearly the part I disputed, namely that the rejection of 2400 SAT students happen very regularly. </p>
<p>It’s pretty clear that many of us know how many US students score 2400 annually and what this absolute number would represent when compared to the total number of UC applications. </p>
<p>However, I did leave the door open for the possibility that the last sentence was not really related to UC admissions. If you want to chalk the diference of opinions to an unfortunate juxtaposition of two different points, so be it.</p>
<p>UC takes the SAT scores in one sittings only. I believe there are about 200+ of those students per year. It is just hard to believe the argument that UCLA rejects those students on a regular basis.</p>
<p>As someone well acquainted with the nuances of the English language, I continue to maintain that “regularly” means frequently, much more than it means in large quantity. I neither asserted nor implied that such rejections (whether at UC or at privates) happen in large quantity, relative to the vast admission pools at such schools. To me, regularly means often. If a few students are rejected every year from HYPSMC and UC (and they are), this is indeed a regular occurrence.</p>
<p>What a truly Clintonesque rebuttal. When will we start debating the real meaning of is? HYPSMC is not relevant in what is being debated here. The point is very clear: you claimed that the UC were rejecting students with 2400 SAT VERY regularly. </p>
<p>And, as far as I know, your claim was that your “review” of UC applications and letters of rejection is what compelled you to offer the statement in discussion. </p>
<p>Regardless if regularly relates to a frequency or a number of occurences in a decade, it makes no difference to the real argument here. And the real argument is that UC does NOT reject 2400 SAT in great quantities nor with great frequency. </p>
<p>By their own statement, ‘race’ (“the number of African American high school students”) was a “catalyst” that resulted in a change to the “operation of [the] public education” admission process. How is that consistent with both the spirit and letter of the law stating that it’s illegal to “grant preferential treatment”?</p>
<p>Holistic admission based only on the assay is not good enough to select strong students. UC does not accept letters of recommendation and assays can be written by someone else.</p>
<p>Something new I learn today. GPA is not the only thing that can be used to determine UC ELC. Perhaps many public school administrators don’t even know about this.</p>
<p>Re Post 47:
There is no such thing as “holistic admission based only on the essay.” That is a contradiction in terms. Holistic admissions considers everything. Nevertheless, the essay is often an eliminator in a close admission season (which, lol, includes obviously many recent seasons). There is nothing secretive or suspect about this. It is well known to those who are acquainted intimately with the UC admissions process.</p>
<p>Regarding post 44, again…I know my English language. I know that regularly can mean on a recurring basis, which is exactly, and only what I meant. There’s nothing Clintonesque about my words or my statement. Do not try to conflate my posts into one of your tirades about Clintons & liberals. This is not a political thread, nor is “very regular” meant to indicate numbers or percentages, merely predictable occurrence. Again, look up the meaning if you’re not sure. Nothing in my original post on this made a statistical or percentage claim, either.</p>
<p>The comparison to HYPSMC is apt, because the reality is not dissimilar. Just as <em>regularly</em> (i.e., every year, & predictably), elite <em>privates</em> reject perfect scorers, so does UC (esp. Berkeley, an elite public) regularly (every year, predictably) reject perfect scorers.</p>
<p>Some of the replies on this thread are excessively reactive. I’ve made a simple, factual statement from one who <em>regularly</em> views student applications & their results. There’s nothing overgeneralized or hyperbolic about my statements, except by those who choose to read into them what was never there.</p>
<p>I guess my follow-up question, not particularly directed at you, is how could a member of the general public in California be assured that the UCLA admission process is following current California law? Maybe different blind men are touching different parts of the elephant, but who gets to look at the whole elephant with clear vision and see exactly what’s going on, and who gets to check whether that is legal?</p>
<p>tokenadult: Truly, I think you can’t. There will always be reasons that the necessary data cannot be provided or scrutiny cannot be permitted. Some of the reasons are legitimate; others less so.</p>
<p>I can’t speak to what all institutions do. The longer I am in higher ed the more I discover things that challenge some of my long-held beliefs about institutional integrity. </p>
<p>What I would like to believe (and I have some reasons to feel assured about it) is that what we are seeing is the result of creativity and effectiveness, not illegality. Institutions haven’t given up their belief that they will be better universities if they can recruit racially diverse classes. They attempt to develop procedures that technically or arguably fall on the legal side of what’s permissable, and then vet them with their General Counsel. Some of those things may look illegal to casual observers. Certainly the results, if successful, are going to raise suspicion that something fishy is going on. </p>
<p>The temptation must surely be there to skate over the line. One hopes that ethically they would refuse, but where ethics fail, fear of legal action might help. No one wants to be deposed, no one wants to be the one named in a lawsuit, no one wants to be the person whose actions brought that lawsuit on their institution’s head.</p>
<p>I know that some people would like to see all such efforts end, and that administrators would stop fussing with the legal particulars and accept the idea that the voters (or justices) want it all to just stop. But institutions have powerful beliefs about racial diversity, and those beliefs continue to motivate them to do what they can (hopefully within the law) to maintain or increase it on campus.</p>
<p>What seems to be ignored in these debates is what constitutes “discrimination.” If the admissions process utilized by a particular State university results in zero, or nearly zero, number of a particular racial group, is that process by definition “discriminatory” against that racial group? I think an argument can be made that it is. If Prop 209’s restrictions on UCLA result in a student population that is devoid of African-Americans and has few Latinos, is it fair to conclude that those students simply chose not to work hard enough to meet the proper standards? Or is the problem that the standards used do not take into account the proper criteria that allows African-Americans and Latinos to gain admission?</p>
<p>I have trouble understanding how anyone on this forum can believe that it is better to exclude certain racial California populations from the UCLA student body (Latinos are 35%, Af-Ams 12% of Cal. pop.) , than ensure that they have the opportunity to be there.</p>
Certain racial populations aren’t ‘excluded’ from the UCLA campus. To be excluded means to be prohibited from being on the campus and this isn’t happening on the basis of race. All of the races are ensured an ‘opportunity’ to be there as evidenced by the fact that they’re there and not excluded.</p>
<p>Sorry if I’m focusing on a couple of keywords in your statement but they’re important concepts.</p>
<p>The answer to your question is an emphatic NO. To be discriminatory against a particular group, something must be done to that particular group that is not done to others. To give an example, let’s consider the literacy test that was once used to disenfranchise blacks. Whites were asked to read simple sentences whereas blacks were asked to read extremely complicated compound sentences with obscure vocabulary. There’s a story about a black Harvard graduate who tried vote in his home state. The poll worker presented a difficult English sentence, but the prospective voter easily read it. Dismayed, the poll worker then asked the to-be voter to read sentences in Latin, Greek, and French. The gentleman had no problems whatsoever. Finally, the poll worker presented a sentence in Chinese and said, “Read this!” The gentleman shook his head, smiled, and said, “You do not want me to vote.”</p>
<p>That is discrimination. You had different standards for different races. Is that what happens now in California? Absolutely not. There is one standard for everyone. That is not discrimination and to assert that it is makes a mockery of the history of discrimination in our country.</p>
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<p>Could you please tell us what the “proper criteria that allows African-Americans and Latinos to gain admission” is? In all seriousness, I think the true discrimination occurs when we state that certain groups need different criteria than others in order to be admitted!</p>
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<p>You have trouble understanding because no one here believes that it is ideal to exclude anyone on the basis of race.</p>
<p>This of course is the correct legal definition. This reminds me of something that was said in the [UCLA</a> Today statement](<a href=“http://www.today.ucla.edu/news/080905_holistic-admissions_reed/]UCLA”>http://www.today.ucla.edu/news/080905_holistic-admissions_reed/). Paraphrasing the incorrect statement there into a statement that would be factually true, UCLA could say, “Each of the Ivy League institutions, UC Berkeley, Stanford, USC, and UCLA could likely fill each of their incoming freshman classes with applicants with below-average standardized test scores and below average grade-point averages from any ethnic group or combination of ethnic groups they please. Yet all of these institutions, including UCLA, understand that the ability to succeed in college depends on much more than ethnicity considered in isolation, so they use admissions processes that examine the total candidate and his or her achievements in the context of the opportunities they have been given.” Achievement (considered in the context of opportunities) before high school is indeed an important clue as to who has ability to succeed in college. If achievement is what colleges are looking for, or at least what colleges like UCLA are looking for, why should any college presuppose any distribution of student characteristics other than achievement in the context of opportunities? </p>
<p>Of course California has a large number of open-admission colleges that admit any student who is interested in attending college.</p>
<p>I wonder how UCLA get information about life challenges, environmental, family and personal situations of students. It seems that the personal statement on the application for the entire UC system does not specifically ask for this kind of information.</p>
<p>Section X: Personal Statement
In reading your application, we want to get to know you as well as we
can. There’s a limit to what grades and test scores can tell us so we ask you
to write a personal statement.
Your personal statement — consisting of responses to two prompts — is
your chance to tell us who you are and what’s important to you. Think
of it as your opportunity to introduce yourself to the people reading your
application. Be open, be honest, be real. What you tell us in your personal
statement gives readers the context to better understand the rest of the
information you’ve provided in your application.
A few tips: Read each prompt carefully and be sure to respond to all
parts. Use, specific, concrete examples to support the points you want to
make. Finally, relax. This is one of many pieces of information we consider
in reviewing your application; an admission decision will not be
based on your personal statement alone.
Instructions
◗ Respond to both questions, using a maximum of 1,000 words total.
◗ You may allocate the word count as you wish. If you choose to
respond to one prompt at greater length, we suggest your shorter
answer be no less than 250 words.
◗ Stay within the word limit as closely as you can. A little over — 1,012
words, for example — is fine.</p>
<p>Prompt #1
Describe the world you come from — for example, your family, community
or school — and tell us how your world has shaped your dreams
and aspirations.
Prompt #2
Tell us about a personal quality, talent, accomplishment, contribution
or experience that is important to you. What about this quality or accomplishment
makes you proud and how does it relate to the person you are?</p>
<p>Is it possible that the counselor’s recommendation form invites the counselor to make it explicit, if a student faced particular challenges? Maybe that’s a source of information for UCLA.</p>
<p>There was a story here fiveor more years back, about some kid who had overcome an extraordinary set of challenges in his life. He submitted a pretty straightforward application to U-M and didn’t get admitted. His local paper had a field day with that one, how this local boy hero who had done so much got slammed by the flagship public. </p>
<p>Well, the admissions office pulled his file to review it and figure out how they missed admitting this kid, and it turned out that his admissions counselor had not said ONE WORD about this kid’s life or why they might want to place his fine-but-not-stellar application in context. Neither had his teachers. Which was frustrating. When the teachers & counselors bring that thing up, it adds credibility to whatever the student may tell you on his or her app.</p>
<p>Now the counselor’s rec asks this explicitly. Teachers are also invited to share such information.</p>
<p>I’m not sure what UCLA’s procedure is, of course.</p>
<p>I think hoedown’s point is correct that sometimes applicants who have compelling cases that they have achieved very well in the context of their opportunities miss the chance to say so. That’s why some admission officers say things like, “Nobody likes a braggart, but if you must brag, brag on your application,” or things like that. Some students think their life experiences are commonplace, and don’t mention how challenging those experiences are. Some other students think they shouldn’t brag about their achievements, and thus hardly mention their achievements. Striking the optimum balance is difficult–there is certainly a role in K-12 education for teachers and counselors to advise students how to make their best case for admission. All of us parents here on CC try to do that on a volunteer basis for students of all backgrounds from all over the world.</p>