Minority applicant pool grows

After a year of criticism regarding a lack of diversity in UCLA admissions, university officials said they were satisfied to see an increase in minority and transfer applicants in statistics released Wednesday.

The UCLA application pool for fall 2007, which shows increases in transfer and minority applicants, made UCLA the most applied to school in the country, with 50,694 applicants.

This number is an increase of 7.1 percent compared to last year, and the UC system as a whole experienced an increase of 5.3 percent, according to the UC Office of the President.

But though transfer applicants increased at UCLA, officials were concerned to see a decrease system-wide.

Though the number of American Indian applicants decreased compared to last year, the total number of underrepresented minorities who applied to UCLA increased from 10,097 for fall 2006 to 11,414 for fall 2007.

Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Janina Montero said she was especially happy to see a 14.1 percent increase in UCLA applications from the black community.

Last year, UCLA faced criticism from students and alumni because 96 black students were admitted to the fall 2006 freshman class.

“There was a fear that African-American students would be deterred from applying here because of all the public criticism,” Montero said.

Last year, there was a 27.7 percent increase in American Indian applications, but this year the university faced a 5 percent decrease.

Overall, though, the number of American Indian applicants has increased in recent years ““ in 2005 there were 188 American Indian applicants, and there were 259 for fall 2007.

“Frankly, I’m still disappointed in (the decrease),” Montero said. “More analysis and engagement needs to be done there.”

Another disappointment for the UC system was an overall decrease in transfer applications, despite efforts to recruit more California community college students, said Nina Robinson, UC director of external policy and relations in student affairs.

Though transfer application rates increased at UCLA, UC Berkeley and UC Irvine, the UC system saw an overall 2 percent decrease.

“It’s disheartening to not see the progress we like to see, but are encouraged by the rise in minority applicants from California community colleges,” Robinson said. “But we are holding ourselves to a standard where we’d like to get a healthy increase every year.”

Robinson commended campuses such as UCLA that reached out to local community college districts and as a result had an increase in the number of transfer applicants.

Locally, the Los Angeles Community College District had a 4 percent increase in transfer applicants to the UC system.

Angela Law, a fourth-year political science student who is also a transfer student, said she was glad to hear that the number of minority students applying as transfer students had risen.

“I am glad that more minority groups are having an opportunity to access higher education, as long as it is not at the expense of more qualified persons who also happen to be from a group that is not a minority,” Law said. “Having a more diverse student population can make the college experience more beneficial and more enjoyable in a sense.”

Gregory Cendana, internal vice president of the Undergraduate Students Association Council, said he believes the statistics show that outreach programs such as Student Initiated Access have contributed to the rise in applications from minority students and California public high schools as a whole.

Cendana added that he hopes the state continues to fund such programs.

“I’m also curious to see if the new holistic admission process will yield a more diverse admissions,” Cendana said.

This pool of applicants will be the first to undergo the new holistic admissions approach at UCLA, in which two readers will consider the application as a whole.

In previous years, two readers would consider the academic section of the application while another analyzed the personal statement separately.

Admission decisions for freshman will be available April 1 and for transfer students on May 1.

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