Fewer Blacks and Latinos Admitted to 3 UC Schools

Offering the first look at University of California undergraduate admissions in the post-affirmative action era, three UC campuses Monday reported drops of up to 45% in the number of blacks and Latinos admitted as freshmen for next fall.

UC Irvine, UC San Diego and UC Davis showed sharp declines in the number of blacks and Latinos--what the university calls underrepresented minorities--in the first year that the system has discontinued considering race, ethnicity and gender in picking its freshmen class.

The declines are particularly striking because minority student application numbers were up substantially this year. The falloff in admissions ranged from an 8.6% drop among Latinos at UC Irvine to a 45% drop in the number of African Americans admitted to UC San Diego.

Latino admissions declined by 20% at Davis and 31% at San Diego. The number of black students admitted declined 36% at Davis and 19% at Irvine.

The system’s most selective campuses--UCLA and UC Berkeley--do not plan to release freshmen admissions figures until early next month. But in earlier studies, both campuses have predicted drops of 50% to 70% in blacks and Latinos, with whites and Asian Americans taking their place.

Elsewhere among the eight UC undergraduate campuses, Riverside and Santa Cruz reported more favorable results. Unlike the other campuses, however, those two schools admit all applicants who meet minimum UC eligibility standards.

UC Santa Barbara had planned to release its admissions figures but proved unable to do so.

University officials cautioned that the preliminary figures released Monday will change as the best students pick among multiple offers of admission and those turned away from the selective UC campuses are offered spots at less competitive campuses, like UC Riverside and UC Santa Cruz.

“This is not the final picture,” said Manuel Gomez, UC Irvine’s vice chancellor of student services. “These are admissions numbers, not enrollment.”

Even so, the numbers released Monday are significant because they are the first test of the state’s undergraduate admissions policies in the wake of the ban on affirmative action imposed by the UC Board of Regents in 1995 and then underscored by voters in the 1996 passage of Proposition 209.

“We’re very disappointed in the drops,” said Richard L. Backer, UC San Diego’s assistant vice chancellor for enrollment services. University officials are aggressively reaching out to high schools to help prepare more minority students to compete for the limited spots in the university system, he said.

Ward Connerly, the UC regent who orchestrated the ban on affirmative action, said he too was dismayed by the declining minority admission figures, but for another reason: They indicated, he said, how much the university had artificially propped up minority admissions with a system of preferences.

“When you take away preferences, you don’t need to be a brain surgeon to know there is going to be a drop,” Connerly said. “The University of California is not discriminating against these kids. . . . The relevance of all these numbers is to tell us how badly the secondary school system is preparing black and Latino students to compete.”

To determine the net effect of policy changes, UC San Diego ran a simulation comparing how this year’s applicant pool would have fared using last year’s admissions criteria, which gave allowances for race and gender.

The result: The number of blacks, Latinos and American Indians admitted would have increased 8%, instead of dipping by 40%, Backer said.

Monday’s statistical snapshot is somewhat complicated by the fact that about twice as many applicants as in the past declined to state their ethnicity. That made it more difficult to pinpoint the ethnic breakdown of those admitted. But UC San Diego determined that most of those “decline-to-state” applicants were white or Asian American--accounting for declines in the admissions figures for those two groups.

Connerly and UC admission officers agreed that Monday’s figures had some bright spots.

For example, UC Riverside, which is undergoing a growth spurt, reported a whopping 47% increase in the number of Latinos admitted and a 41% increase in blacks. UC Santa Cruz reported an increase in Latinos, 7.4%, but a slight decrease in black students admitted, down 1.8%.

How many of these students will actually enroll remains to be seen. Knowing that both schools admit all eligible applicants, many students apply to them as backup schools. UC Riverside admitted a record 8,855 students in the hopes of having between 1,800 and 2,200 enroll in the fall.

UC applicants can apply to as many of the eight campuses as they wish by simply checking a box for each campus on the centralized application form.

UC President Richard Atkinson, who joined in recruitment efforts this year by sending 13,000 letters to promising high school seniors, said he hopes that the university can attract more minority students.

“The only way to achieve this, without the use of race and ethnicity in admissions, is by raising the level of education achievement in K-12 schools,” Atkinson said in a statement. “UC cannot do this alone. It will require the cooperation and sustained commitment of all segments of California’s education system.”

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UC Admissions

In the first year that University of California admissions officers have been forbidden to use affirmative action, the numbers of blacks and Latinos picked for next fall’s freshman class have declined sharply. UC Berkeley and UCLA will release their figures next month; UC Santa Barbara’s were unavailable. UC Santa Cruz and UC Riverside, which admit all qualified students, showed increases in most minority admissions.

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UC Davis 1997 1998 % Change African American 518 332 -35.9% American Indian 122 100 -18.0% Latino 1,626 1302 -19.9% Asian American 3,813 4,130 8.3% White 5,615 5,064 -9.8% Declined to state 692 1,915 176.7%

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UC Irvine 1997 1998 % Change African American 303 246 -19.0% American Indian 66 57 -14.0% Latino 1,412 1,291 -8.6% Asian American 5,389 5,309 -1.5% White 3,770 3,375 -10.0% Declined to state 442 1,423 222.0%

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UC Riverside 1997 1998 % Change African American 241 342 41.9% American Indian 29 51 75.9% Latino 1,039 1,528 47% Asian American 3,641 4,113 12.9% White 1,625 1,848 13.7% Declined to state 195 811 315.9%

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UC San Diego 1997 1998 % Change African American 373 203 -45.6% American Indian 105 66 -37.1% Latino 1,427 979 -31.4% Asian American 4,548 4,400 -3.2% White 5,309 4,790 -9.8% Declined to state 1,541 2,603 68.9%

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UC Santa Cruz 1997 1998 % Change African American 223 219 -1.8% American Indian 82 96 18.1% Latino 1,159 1,245 7.4% Asian American 2,316 2,516 8.6% White 4,915 4,448 -9.5% Declined to state 562 1,709 204.1%

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Note: Latino groups include Mexican Americans and Chicanos. Asian American groups include Filipino Americans.

Source: UC admissions offices