Thursday, November 20, 2003

LA Times Article on UCLA, Cal Undergraduate Rejections

The article ponders: Why are people with 1400+ SAT scores getting rejected while people with under 1000 SAT are being accepted?

The article notes that 90% of the high-scoring students rejected were white or asian. But it does sample the exceptions to this rule, such as a Pomona student of Puerto Rican descent with a 1420.

This would seem to be quite a mystery. But it's not. The LA Times answered its own question in an article last month entitled "Overall, Race No Factor for Low-Scoring UC Applicants," which actually said exactly the opposite. (no longer free to read, but the Claremont Institute has a bunch of quotes from it here).

Here's a quote:

UC Berkeley, the original focus of the admissions debate, admitted low-scoring blacks and Latinos at twice the rate of Asians and whites with similar scores.

The definition of "low-scoring" was "applicants with scores of 1000 or below." I'm not writing here to say it's bad or unfair that some students are being admitted with low scores. In my opinion, so long as a student comes from an economically disadvantaged family, and yet shows signs of becoming a great student, Berkeley should admit them regardless of their SAT score. But the LA Times shouldn't hide the ball on what's going on.

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