Competition heats up to get into UC top campuses

By MICHELLE LOCKE
Associated Press Writer

BERKELEY, Calif. (AP) The University of California admitted more freshmen this year than ever before, but bagging a spot at one of the top campuses got tougher.

UCLA and UC Berkeley turned away about three out of four applicants, while UC San Diego took only just over one-third of those who wanted to get in.

UCLA, which had the lowest admit rate, 24.1 percent, received more freshman applications about 45,000 than any other public university in the United States, said admissions director Vu T. Tran.

Because more people applied to all eight of UC's undergraduate campuses, overall admissions were up 4 percent, with just over 50,000 California students offered admission for fall 2003, compared to about 48,000 a year ago.

``Candidly, we're very pleased about the admissions outcomes for this cycle,'' said Susan Wilbur, director of UC admissions. ``We were able to accommodate an exceptionally large class and even though it was more competitive in terms of admission this year, the fact that we are able to offer so many spaces to students is, I think, a welcoming sign for California high school seniors.''

The number of underrepresented minorities blacks, Hispanics and American Indians was up slightly; they represented 19.1 percent of admissions last year and 19.8 percent this year.

Those numbers have been closely watched since 1998, when UC stopped considering race in admitting undergraduates. The numbers dropped sharply that year, but have slowly risen since then partly due to increased outreach, a new program guaranteeing eligibility to the top 4 percent of graduates at each high school which is intended to benefit good students stuck in bad schools and population changes.

Last year, the percentage of underrepresented minorities surpassed for the first time the total in 1997, the last year of the old policies. However, the increase was slight, from 18.8 percent in 1997 to 19.1 percent. The increase has not been uniform, with the more competitive campuses still admitting fewer underrepresented minorities than they did when race was a factor in admissions.

At Berkeley, for instance, 515 black students were admitted in 1997, compared to 281 this year.

UC recently changed admissions policies to a system called ``comprehensive review,'' which looks at academics as well as personal issues such as whether the student overcame poverty or some other hardship.

Some had criticized the new system, which went into effect in late 2001, as backdoor affirmative action. However, UC officials had predicted it would not dramatically impact underrepresented minority admissions.

Taking a closer look at systemwide figures for this fall, the number of American Indians admitted overall dropped 3.4 percent, while the number of Hispanics went up by 8.3 percent and the number of black students rose by 6.9 percent.

About 37 percent of admitted freshmen were white. Thirty-three percent were Asians, who did not get extra points under the old affirmative action system. The remainder were of other races or declined to state race or ethnicity.

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