New admissions director confronts policy changes

By Gina Turpel
Daily Bruin Contributor

When Vu Tran took over as the new undergraduate admissions
director earlier this month, he found himself facing revolutionary
changes in admissions.

Tran must implement a new comprehensive review admissions policy
the UC Regents approved last week and work with regents, faculty,
staff and students to make sure the process runs smoothly.

“I am confident that things will turn out fine,”
Tran said. “We have an excellent staff in the Undergraduate
Admissions and Relations with Schools office and effective
leadership in the Student Affairs division.”

Comprehensive review will allow the admissions office to give
more attention to each application, by placing more emphasis on
personal achievements besides GPAs and standardized test
scores.

“The drawback is the required additional resources and
workload,” Tran said, referring to the 40 extra readers the
university must hire to review all the applications.

Readers include faculty and staff from various offices, high
school administrators and counselors and paid readers.

“All will be required to attend training and norming
sessions on the evaluation of student admission
applications,” Tran said.

“All of this must be accomplished within an unforgiving
deadline,” Tran said, since the office will begin reading
applications in December.

UCLA received 41,000 applications for fall 2001 ““ the most
applications nationwide. The university expects to receive 42,000
to 43,000 applications this year.

Tran had been working with former interim director Tom Lifka to
ease the transition into his new position.

Tran spent the last 20 years at Cal State University,
Northridge, working in the financial aid and student recruitment
department, where, he said, he managed complex operations similar
to those demanded of him in his new position.

“Enrollment management covers many areas, including
financial aid, admissions, recruitment, registration,” he
said. “The UCLA admissions director position is a natural
progression in my career path.”

“It’s a chance to work at a premier institution, a
dream come true,” he said.

Tran said he feels at home at UCLA ““ he received his
doctorate in education from UCLA in 1999, and three of his brothers
are alumni.

One of Tran’s two daughters is a graduating senior from
the physiological science department at UCLA, and the other attends
UC Berkeley.

“We still have graduate school to work on. We could still
make her a Bruin,” Tran said about his Berkeley daughter.