Regents’ diversity plan holds promise

Monday, March 16, 1998

Regents’ diversity plan holds promise

Admitting top 4 percent from each high school sounds good, but
details still sketchy

In an effort to maintain accessibility and diversity in the
University of California, UC President Richard Atkinson recently
drafted a proposal to offer college admissions to the top 4 percent
of high-school seniors from each high school in California.

The plan has a lot of potential; it hopes to give students with
limited academic resources an opportunity to compete for coveted
spots in the university. But while the goals of the preliminary
proposal are noble, the outcome will depend largely on several
specific guidelines that have not yet been addressed.

The plan hopes to increase the diversity of the students
attending the university by drawing students from more schools. The
plan takes into account that not all high schools are on the same
level with one another. For example, one high school may send 50
students to UCLA, while another may only send five. But that does
not necessarily mean that students from the latter high school are
of lesser merit than students from the former. Rather, the number
of college-bound students is often a reflection of the resources
each of the schools offers its students. These important resources
may include college counselors, college preparatory courses,
honors/AP grade inflation or other factors that may shape what the
students actually learn.

The immense academic and environmental variation from school to
school makes it difficult, if not impossible, to admit students
based on uniform criteria that fail to take into account the
different levels of performance students can extract from their
given resources.

The problem is that the plan, which is still in its early
stages, is unclear about how this idea can be implemented. Thus
far, the proposal simply states that the top 4 percent of
high-school students will be admitted into the UC. However it fails
to address the different degrees of competitiveness in the
admissions processes for each of the individual campuses. This
clause is essential to the success of the plan. If students within
the top 4 percent of their class automatically qualify for
admission into the campus of their choice, the more competitive and
popular campuses may be flooded with prospective students, while
the lesser-known institutions may suffer from lack of interest.

Another issue the Regents will need to address is how schools
will rank their students. While some high schools rank students
taking into account AP and honors classes, others do not. In order
for the plan to succeed, high schools must standardize the way high
school GPAs are calculated.

Although the plan remains tentative and the very factors that
will determine its success are not in place yet, the concept of
broadening access to the university is a good one.

The potency of the plan is exciting, as it may give
disadvantaged students the ability to compete with those who have
the resources to maximize their academic growth in high school. It
also gives hope to students who would otherwise not apply to the UC
because they believe they cannot be competitive.