UC still faces challenge of admissions equality

By Karen Albrecht
Daily Bruin Reporter

Providing a level playing field for college admissions continues
to be a challenge, despite the repeal of SP-1 and 2 at the UC Board
of Regents meeting last week.

Discrepancies in advanced placement course availability give
some students unfair advantages in the college admissions process,
according to a statement by the American Civil Liberties Union.

Norman Matloff, former chair of UC Davis’s affirmative
action committee and UCLA alumnus, agrees. As a step toward fair
admissions, the current UC policy of adding an extra grade point to
AP courses should be eliminated, said Matloff, who is also a
computer science professor at UC Davis.

“I don’t like the AP program, because it has become
a game, with the inequity of adding an extra grade point,” he
said.

Among California public schools, 15 percent offer no AP courses,
and an additional 48 schools offer only one AP subject exam. This
means 143,000 students attend California high schools that offer
one or no AP level classes, according to a study by the Thomás
Rivera Policy Institute.

More than 60 percent of these AP-deficient schools have
predominantly African American and Latino students.

But many UCLA students say grade inflation provides an important
incentive to choose the more challenging AP classes when GPA is one
of the main factors considered in college admittance.

“The only reason I took AP classes in high school was for
the extra grade point,” said Mañanita Paez, second-year
English student who attended Roosevelt High School.

Citing the state’s failure to assure equal and adequate
access to AP courses and its influence on admissions from
low-income high schools, the ACLU filed a class-action lawsuit
against California in 1999.

It argued African American, Latino, and lower-income students
are being “systematically marginalized” from attending
prestigious universities, partly due to the unavailability of AP
courses in high school, according to an ACLU statement.

“It would be a lie to say students at high schools lacking
AP courses are not at a disadvantage,” said Thomas Lifka,
interim director of admissions and associate vice chancellor of
student academic services.

UCLA admissions tries to take AP course availability into
account by looking at student class ranking, Lifka said.

But quality of curriculum is important, and the extra grade
point is used to reflect the more challenging classes.

“When students take particular rigorous classes and do
well in them, they should be rewarded,” Lifka said.

AP classes provided not only an extra grade point for first-year
undeclared student Obediah Elkins, but a way of avoiding the easy-A
regular “bonehead classes,” he said.

“I understand that by eliminating the extra grade point,
they are attempting to make college admissions more fair,”
Elkins said. “But it would eliminate the incentive to take AP
classes for a lot of people.”

Unaware of the additional grade point when he initially enrolled
in his first AP courses, first-year computer science student Jeh
Yung said students would still enroll in the more challenging
classes for the higher educational standards and to potentially
earn college credit.

“UC does not add any grade points for honors classes, yet
people still take them,” Matloff said. “Why should it
be any different in high school?”