Did UC Berkeley violate California's affirmative action ban?

Did UC's low-SAT admissions dodge affirmative action ban? By Michelle Maitre and William Brand, STAFF WRITERS BERKELEY -- Critics on the University of California Board of Regents and around the state have been asking hard questions about the fairness of admission policies at prestigious UC Berkeley. The critics charge that Berkeley's admissions policy, which weighs personal hardship and extra-curricular achievement alongside academic prowess, has let underqualified students into the internationally famous campus.

The question also has reignited a lingering debate over whether the process has provided a back-door way to skirt a ban on affirmative action.

An analysis of admissions data for 2001 and 2002 by the Oakland Tribune shows that the majority of the low-scoring students admitted to Berkeley were minorities -- leading some to question whether officials have found a new way to use racial preferences.

"That's been the concern all along -- that we haven't had a credible explanation that would dispel suspicions that these squishy comprehensive review admission criteria have been chosen as proxies for race and amount to a camouflage of quotas," said Harold Johnson, an attorney with Pacific Legal Foundation in Sacramento, a nonprofit public interest group.

But university admissions officials say that those who review applications don't know the students' races and test scores don't count as much as critics believe. Besides, they point out, the number of students admitted with low test scores is quite small.

According to an analysis by this newspaper, 90 percent of the 332 students admitted to Berkeley in fall 2002 with SAT scores 1000 or below were minorities. In 2001, 89 percent of the 388 students with low scores were minorities.

The data are the latest squabble in what has become a frustrating headache for Berkeley officials that began after a confidential report released earlier this month raised questions about the academic qualifications of some admitted students.

The report, commissioned by UC Board of Regents Chairman John Moores, found that Berkeley admitted 374 students in fall 2002 and spring 2003 with SAT scores below 1000, yet denied admission to more than 3,000 students who scored 1400 or above.

Berkeley's admissions policy mirrors those in use throughout the nine-campus UC system, and officials say they are in keeping with a policy set by the system's governing board.

In fact, both UC San Diego and UCLA -- the UC system's two other most selective campuses -- last week reported they had also admitted a small percentage of students with low test scores. UC President Robert Dynes has said he will convene a study group to review the admissions process.

Moores' report came at a crucial time for the university. UC regents, responding to an unprecedented level of state budget cuts, are mulling whether they'll have to restrict enrollment next year throughout the system

Further, the report was released just a month before UC's application process opens for next fall. UC will accept applications Nov. 1 through Nov. 30.

Berkeley officials said SAT test scores alone are not a good indicator of who will succeed and who will fail at the university. In fact, because of criticism by former UC President Richard Atkinson, the SAT test is being greatly revised next year.

Many of the students with low SAT scores came from high schools regarded as "low-performing" by educators and many were among the top graduates in their class.

None of the students has left Berkeley due to academic deficiency, officials said.

"We really think (comprehensive review) is the fairest way to evaluate students and the best way to build an exciting undergraduate student body," said Richard Black, Berkeley's assistant vice chancellor for admissions and enrollment.

Moores said he was responding to complaints from parents who question why their highly qualified students were denied admission to the selective campus. "I was surprised, quite frankly, when I got into the data and looked and saw who was being admitted," he said.

He said his analysis raised some serious questions about who is getting into Berkeley. He said there needs to be more transparency in Berkeley's admissions process to answer those questions.

"I'm a fan of comprehensive review and I continue to support it," Moores said, "but comprehensive review was not meant to be an excuse to admit students with low test scores."

Moores' analysis didn't include information on the ethnicity of admitted students, but an additional look at data provided by UC headquarters shows that most of the low-scoring students are minority.

In 2002, 63 -- or 19 percent -- of the students were black and 149 -- or 45 percent -- were Latino. Those are minority groups that are underrepresented at UC Berkeley and other UC campuses. Another 83 students (25 percent) were Asian, 5 (1.5 percent) were Native American and 23 (7 percent) were white. Another 9 students were categorized as "other."

In 2001, 66 -- or 17 percent -- of students admitted with scores below 1000 were black and 170 -- 44 percent -- were Latino. Asian students numbered 110 (28 percent); 25 students (6 percent) were white and 17 students (4 percent) were "other" or didn't provide the data.

Black said the results shouldn't be too surprising considering that many of the low-scoring students came from high schools that rank at the bottom on the state's Academic Performance Index.

"I don't think it means we're going around Proposition 209," said Black, referring to the 1996 voter initiative that banned affirmative action in California. "We did not look at race when we made these admissions decisions. We looked at these other things, and found that, afterwards, when you look at race, you find the that underrepresented minorities are overrepresented in that group" of low-scoring students.

Johnson of the Pacific Legal Foundation said Berkeley hasn't clearly defined the criteria the campus uses in making admissions decisions -- which fuels concerns over a end run around Proposition 209.

"The really outrageous thing in a publicly funded university is they're not laying out clearly the details of the process -- what criteria they employ, how they arrived at that criteria and how the criteria are weighed against each other," Johnson said.

Those comments frustrate Black, who said the admissions criteria is laid out in a variety of documents that are widely available.

Others say no one should be surprised that minorities score poorly on the SAT -- and those scores alone don't mean a student is underqualified for the university.

A report released Friday by the San Francisco-based Equal Justice Society refutes Moores' analysis. A bevy of research indicates that socioeconomic status is closely correlated to SAT scores.

"With every $10,000 increase in family income, there is a lock-step increase in SAT scores," said the Equal Justice report, which was prepared by a coalition of Berkeley faculty, civil rights and education groups.

"Any race-neutral selection process will pass racial disparities in SAT scores from the applicant pool through to the freshman class, so of course underrepresented minorities have lower scores than whites," said Claude Fischer, a Berkeley sociologist and one of the co-authors of the report.

Staff writer Michele R. Marcucci contributed to this report. Contact Michelle Maitre at href="mailto:mmaitre@angnewspapers.com ">mmaitre@angnewspapers.com . Contact William Brand at bbrand@angnewspapers.com .

"Every year we get from 20 to 40 students admitted to UC Berkeley," said David Turner, a counselor Oakland's Skyline High. "We're always disappointed that our underrepresented minorities don't get in as much as Asians and Caucasians."

But, he said, kids from more affluent backgrounds have an edge, including SAT preparation courses that can cost as much as $500 a pop. Students from disadvantaged backgrounds -- whatever their ethnicity -- often walk into the test cold, he said.

"I played football in high school and I have a 930 SAT score," said one student who asked not to be identified. "Now, I'm in graduate school in environmental science."

Nonetheless, Regent Ward Connerly said Moores' report raises some nagging questions about the admissions process UC should address.

"We're going to have to give some serious thoughts to fixing this thing because the problem isn't going to go away," Connerly said. "Every year, the university is going to be having the same conversation we're having right now because more and more kids are going to get turned away. We've got the budget problems, the high competition among students who believe they've earned the right to attend their first-choice school, and this problem is not going to get any easier."

"I played football in high school and I have a 930 SAT score," said one student who asked not to be identified. "Now, I'm in graduate school in environmental science."

Oh, environmental science, right. Probably the equivalent of teacher's college for being a dumping ground for 'students' who can't cut it elsewhere.

All 340 or so 'students' who where admitted despite SAT scores lower than 1000, should be tracked to either prove or disprove the school's claim that scores are not good predictors of academic success.

Anyone can go to Barnes and Noble and pick up a few $20 books which are just as useful as any prep course. I forwent the course, saved my parents some money and raised my score by 250 points from my sophomore to junior year. And, of course, enhanced my vocabulary, reading comprehension, basic math skills, etc. along the way. If you don't expect anything from people from disadvantaged backgrounds and tell them the game is rigged you get some predictable results.

Based on the information contained in the article it would appear that these academic experiments amounted to about 3% of admissions. That's a defensible limit if these students were picked at random to check the academic integrity of the institution. It's not if they were chosen with a template and guided to a sheltered cove within the institution.

What is more troubling is a lack of any disclosers or discussions regarding admissions with scores in the 1000 to 1300 range. I suspect that this range of scores contains most of the abuses.

The willingness of the university to disclose the data outside the 95th percentile leaves me to suspect that the abuses and circumventions are within the ranges that are more defensible through rebutable presumption or plausible denial. Liberals are not ignorant and educated liberals are masters at the deception game.

These 300 some odd anomolies are a red herring released to distract critics and victims of a flawed, utopian admissions policies.

I had a wealthy Property Law professor who buttressed the already strong case against rent control with a personal anecdote.

She told us how two or more of her children had attended Berkeley and had passed down a rent controlled apartment down from one to the other.

Many wealthy people have benefited from rent control, while less wealthy property owners have been screwed by rent control (or have benn made considerably poorer by the effective transfer of wealth effected by rent control).

Many wealthy people have benefited from rent control, while less wealthy property owners
have been screwed by rent control (or have benn made considerably poorer by the
effective transfer of wealth effected by rent control).

Same deal in Santa Monica, CA and in NYC.

The Los Angeles Times had a profile article on four of the low-score admits yesterday.
While I felt that maybe two of them might have merited admittance due to
really tough life circumstances...
there was one really ugly message that could be implied from the story:
If you have a bad test scrore and are white, you better have a documented defect
like a significant learning disability to get in.

(The one white student in the study had dyslexia...wonder if we'll see
some future white applicants FAKE problems in order to get admitted with low test scores...)

Oh, environmental science, right. Probably the equivalent of teacher's college
for being a dumping ground for 'students' who can't cut it elsewhere.

A future law school graduate who will put thousands of Americans out of work in the future
and make a darned good living doing it.
Yep, another California success story!

One additional point: given that Berkley is going to admit low-scoring blacks, WHICH low-scoring blacks will they pick? Or, put another way, what is the likelyhood of a black kid with "connections" to black politicians or "community activists" NOT making it in?

Self-appointed do-gooder "administrators" will stop using their power for affirmative action (so that they can feel good about themselves, and play God with the makeup of a college campus, which is fun) when you pry the applications from the cold, dead fingers. This is why objective metrics such as the SAT were developed in the first place.

Self-appointed do-gooder "administrators" will stop using their power for affirmative action (so that they can feel good about themselves

Or maybe when some high-scoring, but rejected student decides to sue some of these folks -- personally. ?

Nah. Berkeley still has less, and less abusive, affirmative action than do peer institutions, although its certainly not for lack of trying by the admissions office (there's only so much they can get away with under Prop. 109). The most interesting stat in the original story a week or two ago was that the yield rate of the under 1000s was relatively low -- meaning that a nice strong chunk of them were getting admittted to Princeton, Duke and Stanford, despite their dubious qualifications.

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