Holistic review keeps evaluators fully informed

Related Links

• Application
  review may be restructured
• The
  changing face of UCLA diversity
• School to
  adopt UC Berkeley’s “˜holistic’ approach

With this month’s arrival of the Class of 2010 and the
news of its dismal lack of diversity, it is fitting that the Daily
Bruin address the issue of UCLA’s admissions process and the
recent proposal for its reform.

Under the current system, a prospective student’s
application is never reviewed in its entirety. Instead,
applications are divided into parts, with readers assigned to
evaluate each separately. This means that admissions decisions rely
on assessments by partially informed ““ and therefore
partially ignorant ““ readers.

Problems with such a piecemeal approach (“School to adopt
UC Berkeley’s “˜holistic’ approach,” News,
Sept. 24) will be evident to anyone who has evaluated applicants
for any job or leadership position.

An evaluator’s ability to compare candidates is severely
limited without access to all available information.

Comprehensive review, on the other hand, is similar to many job
application processes in that it considers all of the
applicants’ information. Comprehensive review would allow
admissions committees to see the range and depth of qualifications
that each applicant would bring to the UCLA student body.

Providing committee members with the most complete information
possible, as would be done under this new system, is necessary to
ensure sound, well-informed admissions decisions.

With respect to Anthony Pesce’s coverage of this
admissions policy debate (“Application review may be
restructured,” News, Sept. 24), I was disappointed to see a
continued dominance of Ward Connerly’s voice on the
issue.

Connerly has consistently argued that “problems in
education” exist and should be fixed at lower levels.

This framing of the issue obscures the fact that the college
admissions process, precisely because it selects who will and will
not be given the opportunity to earn a degree, does not reflect but
actually perpetuates racial inequality in our society.

Pesce cites Connerly on the rationale for color-blind
admissions. “Minority students should earn their place at a
university rather than attending based on relaxed standards,”
he said.

Following this thread we would have to infer that the current
over-representation of Asians and whites and abysmal
under-representation of Pilipinos, blacks, Latinos, and American
Indians in UCLA’s current student body reflects how well
these minorities have earned, or not earned, their part at
UCLA.

Guzmán is an anthropology graduate student.