A new report by the UCLA Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies criticizes UCLA's admissions procedures and policies for what it calls a lack of "sensitivity to the context in which the applicant actually achieved merit" and claims the university has relied "too heavily on minute differences in numbers and gross rankings." The report was released after acting Chancellor Norman Abrams revealed that the university is in the process of changing its admissions policies in response to the low number of African American freshman enrolling at UCLA this fall.

Darnell Hunt, director of the Bunche Center, said that the report titled "'Merit' Matters: Race, Myth and Admissions," explains how the problem of low African American student enrollment rested with UCLA's admissions policies and not on the "rather common misperception (that) exists about the nature of the challenges confronting African American students who seek admissions to our nation's top colleges and universities."

Currently, UCLA's freshman admissions system involves separate evaluations of academic achievement, personal achievement and life challenges. The Bunche report said that this admissions procedure has not provided "a mechanism for allowing admissions officials to fully take into account how students' academic achievement may be impacted by their schooling opportunities or individual life experiences."

Under the proposal by Abrams, which if approved would take effect for students applying to UCLA in November for the 2007-08 academic year, all sections of the application would be reviewed by one "reader" - the first step in the admissions process. The Bunche report endorses this "holistic" approach, saying it would allow admissions officials to "fully take into account how students' academic achievement may be impacted by their schooling opportunities or individual life experiences."

The Bunche Center report analyzes what researchers called two UCLA admissions myths.
The first is that Proposition 209, the voter initiative that went into effect in 1998 that barred California's public colleges and universities from considering race, gender or ethnicity in admissions, excuses UCLA's administration from taking a proactive stance on the recent crisis in African American access to the campus, the report said. Researchers said UCLA's admissions process can be changed and still comply with Proposition 209.

Bunche Center researchers said the second myth is that the decline of African American admissions to the most selective UC campuses like UCLA primarily is due to a K-12 system in California that has prepared too few African American students who are "competitive."

"There are more than enough high-achieving and interested California high school students to completely reverse the recent declines in African American admissions to UCLA," the report said.

This fall, 2 percent - or 96 students -in UCLA's freshman class were expected to be African American - the lowest in decades.

Supported by a grant from the Ford Foundation, the Bunche Center established the College Access Project for African Americans in 2002 to examine the crisis of severe under-representation confronting African Americans in California's public institutions of higher education.

The entire report can be found at www.bunchecenter.ucla.edu.

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