USA TODAY January 28, 2002 California rewrites college admissions Mary Beth Marklein LA JOLLA, Calif. -- At the University of California-San Diego, where 41,000 applicants are vying for 4,000 freshman slots, admissions director Mae Brown deals in numbers, plain and simple. And on this January morning, the goal is to make sure her team of application readers knows how to take the eight-page form onto which a teenager has condensed a lifetime of blood, sweat, hopes and dreams, and distill it to a point value. Debilitating medical condition: 500. Raised by a single parent: 250. Senior class president: 300. Good grades and test scores still matter most at the University of California. But under a new admissions policy designed to consider what officials call the "full complexity" of applicants to UC's eight undergraduate campuses, qualities such as motivation, special talent and the ability to transcend personal challenges count more than ever before. Called comprehensive review, it is the latest in a string of UC initiatives suggesting a reconfiguration of concepts of fairness and merit in college admissions. Under consideration next at UC: dropping the SAT 1. Whereas academic talent alone was once enough to win a coveted spot in a UC school, the weight now given to personal qualities and circumstances "sends a strong signal that UC is looking for students who have achieved at high levels and, in doing so, have challenged themselves to the greatest extent possible," says UC president Richard Atkinson. Selective private institutions have long examined applicants' achievements in the context of their environment. And UC-Berkeley already has adopted such a policy. But because of the sheer volume of applications involved, a thorough examination of each application is neither common nor practical for the most selective public campuses. Now, though, given the changing political, legal and demographic landscape in California and beyond, UC's policy "may well be the wave of the future," says David Ward, president of the American Council on Education, a Washington group for college presidents. At the least, Ward says, "this new development will be carefully watched." But if the plan has gained attention, it also has attracted detractors. Even before UC's governing board approved it in November, comprehensive review was attacked by groups who view it as an end run on the state's ban on racial preferences. They and others worry that any de-emphasis on grades and test scores portends a decline in academic quality. Even some supporters of the concept think the policy was thrown together too hastily. The California legislature budgeted $ 750,000 this year to carry out the plan, but some residents question whether that's enough to do justice to such a massive undertaking. Berkeley alone spent $ 190,000 the year it introduced comprehensive review. And some high school counselors wonder if kids who applied before the policy was approved -- smack-dab in the middle of the application season -- could be at a disadvantage. Atkinson remains undeterred. For starters, the policy asks nothing new of applicants, who routinely have been asked to provide personal and extracurricular data. And candidates still must take required courses and rank high academically -- either in the top 12.5% of graduating seniors statewide or the top 4% at their high school. The difference is that individual campuses previously could admit as much as 75% of their freshman classes on academic strength. Now all applicants must undergo review on a wider range of qualities, including family background and access to educational opportunity. Atkinson also dismisses the notion that the plan is a backdoor attempt to admit more underrepresented minorities -- primarily blacks and Hispanics. Objective or subjective? UC officials don't deny their desire to admit a class of students that represents the state's ethnic makeup. After voters banned affirmative-action programs in 1996, its three most popular and selective schools -- Berkeley, UCLA and UCSD -- saw drops of 25% to 50% in admission of underrepresented minorities. Campuses have begun to rebound, in part because of aggressive outreach. But some numbers still are embarrassingly low. Of 18-year-olds in California, UC statistics show 45% are Hispanic; 8% black. Last year, UCSD enrolled 33 black freshmen -- not even 1% of its class. Hispanics make up about 10% of the campus population. That's not lost on minority students. Stroll along a central campus walkway, and "on a good day you might see three" black students, says Simone Jackson, 22, a human development and ethnic studies major. "It can be isolating." Given the allowances for financial issues, comprehensive review could lead to greater admission numbers for low-income minorities. But most experts agree that socioeconomic status is no proxy for race, and even avid supporters of affirmative action doubt comprehensive review will make much difference in the ethnic composition of the entering class. "In this matter, there is no way for us to manipulate the system," says Joseph Watson, UCSD vice chancellor of student affairs. Nevertheless, a public service law firm that rallied for an end to racial preferences will be watching, with knives sharpened, to see whether there's a bump in the number of underrepresented minorities on UC campuses next fall. "The university really could have bought themselves a lawsuit," says Sharon Browne, a lawyer with the Sacramento-based Pacific Legal Foundation. "What they're doing is eliminating objective standards in favor of subjective factors." Others say it's not that simple. "Grades are subjective, and they don't measure motivation," says UCSD application reader Patsy Bentley, a counselor at Carlsbad High School. "I actually have faith in the system." Still, there's ample room for variation within that system, because each campus has latitude in how it carries out the new policy. On one end is UCSD, a fast-growing campus with rising SAT scores that takes pride in its open-book approach. In anticipation of the change, researchers developed simulations to come up with a formula that met the consensus of the admissions committee. A computer crunches much of the easily digested data, including grade-point average and standardized test scores. Brown's cadre of 50 readers scores the non-academic qualities according to predetermined weights. Essays are read not to determine writing ability (an SAT 2 test will do that) but to uncover information -- the traumatic death of both parents, say -- not asked for elsewhere. Some factors are more clear-cut than others. Neither parent graduated from college? Easy, 300 points. But what if a student says he did 125 hours of volunteer work -- half of those in weekly Key Club meetings? Regular meeting attendance doesn't count, even for a service club, which means the student doesn't meet the 100-hour community service threshold. "We're sometimes criticized for being too quantitative, but it is transparent to students," Brown says. And "the reality is, every (campus) has to quantify -- you can't admit the whole pool" of applicants. Hours per application But while the upfront methodology means admissions officials can show exactly why an applicant was rejected, it also could reveal fodder for a lawsuit. Some UCSD faculty members, for instance, have questioned point awards for applicants who were involved in precollegiate, motivational or enrichment programs; many, but not all, target minorities. On the other end is Berkeley, where applications are read by at least two rigorously trained people, with an eye toward evaluating an applicant's achievements based on his or her individual circumstances. Hours could be spent going over a single application. "It's not just a matter of not using a formula or fixed weight. It's also a question of rethinking the whole process," says Robert Laird, who developed the plan. Laird, who retired in 1999, thinks UC should have given campuses more time to create an assessment plan. Others see it differently. "The rumors one hears from many sources about things at UC-Berkeley are not reassuring at all," says UCSD psychology professor Hal Pashler. "There is a vast (amount of) research showing that when people try to combine different kinds of factors in their heads, like an applicants' scores, recommendations (and) talents, they are unreliable and even whimsical." Some critics also point to slipping average SAT scores for entering freshmen at Berkeley -- from 1330 in 1998 to 1290 in 2001 -- as evidence that academic standards there are in decline.