The University of California should stop requiring in-state applicants to take SAT subject tests, according to changes in freshman-eligibility requirements proposed recently by the system’s Board of Admissions and Relations With Schools.

Applicants must now take two of the tests in subjects of their choosing. In its proposal, however, the board says that the requirement “contributes very little to UC’s ability to predict which applicants will perform well initially at UC.” The board also concludes that the requirement contributes to the underrepresentation of black and Hispanic students in the system’s applicant pool.

“The requirement isn’t helping us; instead it is differentially burdensome on certain groups,” Mark M. Rashid, the board’s chairman and a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the university’s Davis campus, told the Daily Bruin.

Before 2006, the university required three SAT subject tests — mathematics, writing, and one elective. But changes in the new SAT Reasoning test (including the addition of a writing section and elements of the math subject test) prompted the system to consider altering its policy on subject tests. —Eric Hoover