September 29, 2006

UCLA Adopts 'Holistic' Model in Admissions to Stem Decline in Minority Enrollment

The University of California at Los Angeles announced on Thursday that it planned to adopt a more “holistic” admissions model in response to declining black enrollments. The new model, approved this week by UCLA’s Academic Senate, will replace a system in which portions of each application were fielded off to different reviewers with a system under which each application is examined in its entirety.

The university’s acting chancellor, Norman Abrams, and leaders of the Academic Senate said the change would help ensure that each applicant’s academic achievements were considered in a broader context, taking into account factors such as school quality and how much the applicant appeared to have sought out challenges.

UCLA officials said the change would be the most sweeping at their institution since the University of California Board of Regents’ 2001 adoption of a “comprehensive review” policy, which calls for each application to be examined for insights into the obstacles that the applicant has faced. Both “comprehensive review” and the latest change at UCLA represent attempts to reverse the decline in minority enrollments that followed bans on race-conscious admissions adopted by the regents in 1995 and by the state’s voters in 1996. Only about 2 percent of the freshmen enrolled at UCLA are black, the lowest share since 1973 (The Chronicle, June 4).

The adoption of a holistic approach parallels steps taken by leading public universities, such as the University of Washington and the University of Wisconsin, in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s rulings on affirmative action in admissions three years ago (The Chronicle, July 4, 2003).

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