UC-Berkeley says race wasn't a factor in selecting its incoming freshmen class:
Race was not a substantial factor in the admission process for UC Berkeley’s incoming freshman class, said a university-commissioned study released Monday. According to the report by UC Berkeley sociology professor Michael Hout, the selection process relied on academic factors such as grades, standardized test scores and high-school course work rather than race.The university kept in line with its goal to use comprehensive review, which weighs academic achievement and each applicant’s background, in the admissions process, the report said. “In 2004 comprehensive review worked pretty much as designed,” the report said. “Academic achievement outweighed all other factors in the selection process. Applicants’ grades influenced readers the most.”
...Interest in developing a study of the influence of race in admission harks back to 2003, when UC Regent John Moores questioned whether the university’s admissions decisions were being made efficiently enough. Moores published a report in 2003 which found that nearly 400 students with SAT scores below 1,000 were admitted to the campus, while 641 students with nearly perfect scores were rejected. The results set off a whirlwind of debate about the university’s admission practices.
I will admit to being a skeptic about comprehensive review, and I've wondered why much of the coverage didn't ask some straightforward questions about the theories behind the application process. I'm glad to see that academic achievement was heavily weighted here, and I'll be just as interested to see the graduation rates four years' hence.
If the university uses race in its admissions process, it would be in violation of Proposition 209, a 1996 initiative that bans affirmative action in California, Moore added.
That pesky little legality issue doesn't stop some students from complaining about the lack of AA:
...Yvette Felarca, chairperson of BAMN, a pro-affirmative action student group, said she was not surprised that race was not considered in the admission process. “(The UC) doesn’t go far enough to ensure the enrollment of black and Latino students,” Felarca said. “Test scores are not an objective factor. It is a saturated bias.”
It's interesting to see BAMN described here in such a mild way, as BAMN stands for "By Any Means Necessary." If you think that name means the organization allows for violence, there are some who would agree, and there are others who claim the organization is nothing but a student branch of the ultra-left Revolutionary Worker's League.
BAMN hates standardized tests, unsurprisingly, because they hate rich people, and they've duped themselves into believing that SAT items are somehow written so that only rich white teenagers can understand them. What BAMN really hates are comments like the ones I wrote over a year ago, because BAMN isn't about improving educational opportunities for minorities so much as they are about "redistributing the wealth":
The correlation of SES with SAT scores tells us absolutely nothing about whether the SAT is measuring something real. In fact, in our capitalistic society, it would be very odd if SAT didn't correlate with SES. The fact is that kids who come from wealthy homes are more likely to have had access to tutoring and better schools; are more likely to come from homes with educated parents; are more likely to have spent time around books and libraries and enriched environments. Thus, the SAT, which is related to SES, is telling us that kids who grow up around more money learn more, and do better academically as a whole. The faltering K-12 public system is complicit in this, because kids from poor backgrounds often get stuck in the worst schools, with the teachers most willing to lower standards and make excuses.
You will note that nowhere in BAMN's list of What We Stand For is there anything at all about improving the K-12 system so that minority students will actually be better qualified for college, as opposed to admitted by quota or AA.
Posted by kswygert at May 20, 2005 01:40 PM