UCLA should keep tiered admissions system

McLaughlin is a first-year transfer student majoring in
English.

By Kate McLaughlin

I left high school early and moved out on my own. Before that
time, my family and I subsisted on food stamps. To pay our two
mortgages, we cleaned office buildings. Every morning before school
and every night after school, my brothers and I scrubbed dozens of
toilets, vacuumed acres of office space and dumped thousands of
wastepaper baskets. I didn’t study much, but I worked a
lot.

In order to get an education, I traveled alone more than 3,000
miles to California and spent three years at a community college,
eventually earning, albeit the hard way, my admission to UCLA.

My time at El Camino College prepared me intellectually and
pragmatically for university-level academic work. It wasn’t
easy, but neither was it impossible. My community college
experience instilled in me a strong sense of accomplishment as well
as a strong sense of gratitude for the opportunity to learn, to
prepare and to move on to UCLA, all for only $13 per unit.

Having said that, the outright shock I felt after reading
Marcelle Richards’ Oct. 2 story, “Admissions to drop
tier system” (Daily Bruin, News) is, I hope,
understandable.

Under the current two-tier system ““ which the Academic
Senate is busily dismantling at the behest of the regents ““
25 to 50 percent of incoming freshmen are selected for admittance
based on special talents or personal hardships. The rest have to
get in the traditional way, with exceptional grades, high SAT
scores and outstanding personal achievements.

I ask proponents of the new system: What’s wrong with the
old way? It includes everyone: a hefty share of special-case
students and at least an equal number of the academic elite.

Obviously, the new proposal is designed to provide the
opportunity of higher education to poor and minority students who
have suffered atrocious K-12 educational experiences or for people
who, like me, have suffered some sort of personal hardship.

We know that disadvantaged students aren’t on a level
playing field with students who have attended the better public and
private schools, usually located in more affluent areas. But to
admit disadvantaged students to UCLA without determining their
preparedness to perform university level work is a simplistic
solution with dire long-term consequences.

Something will have to give. Either these students will fail at
their otherwise admirable attempts to educate themselves, or UCLA
professors will be forced to lower their standards, and, as C. S.
Lewis wrote, “a (student) who would be capable of tackling
Aeschylus or Dante sits listening to his coeval’s attempts to
spell out “˜A Cat Sat on a Mat.'”

The only thing that roused me from my state of shock after
reading Richards’ story was the irony in the last sentence:
“The committee has not discussed criteria for transfer
admissions.”

Naturally there’s been no discussion of changing the
admissions criteria for transfer students, because there’s no
need to do so. It’s widely known that the success rate of
transfer students is high, and with good reason.

My advice to UCLA: Leave things the way they are. My advice to
students who have been dealt a lousy hand in life: Report to the
nearest community college (there are more than 100 in California),
do all the work, do it well, then sit back and wait for your
acceptance letter. Because it will come, and when it does
you’ll be ready.