Policy helps students enter UC, leave small-town mindsets behind

  Brian O’Camb O’Camb wants to hear your
small town stories too. E-mail him at [email protected].
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I don’t know about you, but the holidays often depress me.
The problem is that I can’t stand running into people I went
to school with, people that haven’t done much of anything
with themselves in the last five years.

But maybe the holidays won’t be so bad this year thanks to
the UC’s decision to use comprehensive admissions standards.
Finally, I can go home and hold my head high when I see my former
classmates. Let me explain.

First of all, I’m from Beaumont, California, out on the
edge of the desert. With a population of 10,000, it’s a small
cow-town containing simple people with simple problems. It’s
a conservative blue-collar community with lots of churches and
“˜antique’ stores.

But despite Beaumont’s small stature, it does have its own
school district and a high school that numbers around 800 students.
At such a small school, everyone knows everybody else ““ and
that isn’t always a good thing.

When I attended school there, the district was classified as a
Chapter One on a scale of 1 to 10, with one being the poorest. And
according to the Academic Performance Index, 68 percent of the
students questioned at Beaumont High in 1999 were socioeconomically
disadvantaged and 35 percent of the students were on free or
reduced lunches. Also, in 1997, only five AP classes, none of them
in the sciences or mathematics, were offered, and it was just the
year before that CD ROMs were added to the school’s
computers.

Anyone who has grown up in a small town will tell you that
everyone wants out. But when the time comes, hardly anyone leaves.
One of my classmates is now in her fifth year at a local junior
college; she still doesn’t have her associate’s degree.
Another guy I knew has been dishonorably discharged from the
Marines for drug use after having been dismissed from Cal Poly
Pomona for the same offense. And let’s not forget the 10
people I know who are married with children and working 9-to-5
jobs.

The problem is that small schools with limited resources ““
and crappy counselors ““ don’t offer kids something
better. Upon seeing my “astounding” PSAT score of 1120,
both of my high school counselors advised me to join the military.
When I balked at the idea, they encouraged me to attend a junior
college, even though I scored over a 1200 on the SAT and had a 4.0
plus GPA.

Neither counselor thought I was “ready” to attend a
big university. It’s no wonder that out of a graduating class
of 165, four students, including myself, applied to UCLA. I was the
only one to get in. One of us applied to Berkeley (he got in, but
opted for UCSB); another to Stanford (she was rejected). Nearly
everyone else was content to remain close to home, attending UC
Riverside, Cal State San Bernadino, University of LaVerne,
University of Redlands or a junior college. A few made it up to
UCSB.

This is exactly the reason that comprehensive review, which
according to the UC evaluates students in terms of academic
performance, personal achievement ““ such as leadership and
extracurricular activities ““ and life challenges, including
socioeconomic background and family contexts, is needed.

Critics dismiss the admissions criteria as subjective, and
others claim that the process will attempt to circumvent
Proposition 209, the measure banning affirmative action in
California institutions.

What those critics fail to realize is that comprehensive review
is a two-way street. The university has told students that they
will be judged in a more holistic fashion, and students from small
schools like Beaumont may actually opt to apply to the larger state
universities if they know that their chances of getting in
aren’t next to none.

Think about it: many students from small towns and schools
don’t know of anything outside of their community. How can
they conceive of going to a large city like Los Angeles or New York
when all they know is the lay of the land in a 60-mile radius?

Admissions packets should also be judged not just by what is
written, but by what isn’t said. If a student has never been
outside of their community, can we judge them by their life
experience? I say judge them on their inexperience. For many
students from small towns and underfunded schools, going to college
is as much about forming a life experience as it is applying their
own life experience to university life. I know this was the case
with me. My girlfriend, whom I met here at UCLA, is Armenian. I
didn’t even know what an Armenian was when I got out of high
school!

The UC has finally assured students in the same situation I was
once in that they can realistically aim higher without being
written off. I know that Beaumont High has a history of either one,
at most two, students who are admitted to UCLA each year. Maybe
under comprehensive review, that number will continue to
increase.

I certainly hope so. Then I wouldn’t have to worry about
running into people who never escaped small-town life for something
potentially better.