Univ. of Calif. considering more flexible admissions rules

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The University of California is considering dramatically reducing the percentage of students guaranteed admission to the system's 10 undergraduate campuses, replacing it with a process that gives schools more admissions flexibility.The faculty proposal, to be discussed by UC's governing Board of Regents in July, would change student admissions from a formula that some say is too rigid and doesn't offer enough opportunity to inner-city and rural high school students.As drafted, it would change UC's decades-old promise of a seat to the top 12.5 percent of high school graduates. Instead, it would guarantee a seat only to about the top 10 percent of graduates.It would let campuses review students' individual merits instead of relying only on a set formula of courses, test scores and grades. The proposal would also eliminate the requirement for the SAT II subject exam.The UC Academic Assembly, which represents the faculty, voted 38-12 this month to recommend that the regents adopt the changes.Supporters say the new policy would broaden access for students at inner-city and rural high schools. They often don't have all the college-preparatory classes required by UC or adequate counselors to advise students on the menu of courses and tests required for UC."They are basically trying to equalize things because the upper-middle-class students have all the advantages and the poor kids don't have good counselors," said Jon Reider, an admissions expert and director of college counseling at the private University High School in San Francisco.Thousands of academically strong students are rejected by UC every year because they failed to take the right courses or tests, proposal supporters say.Under the changes, all students would still have to take the SAT I reasoning test or the ACT exam, with a writing exam. Professor Mark Rashid is chairman of the Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools, the faculty committee that developed the proposal. He said students who otherwise would have been turned away would under the new proposal be entitled to a review and evaluated and admitted if they are competitive, regardless of the guarantee.But critics say the proposal might actually reduce the number of African American, Latino and Asian American students who would be assured admission.It is not surprising that the more restrictive pool works against minorities, said Ilene Abrams, college adviser at Berkeley High School in Berkeley, Calif. That's because African American and Latino students are more likely to have lower test scores, she said. And even though they would qualify under the current 12.5 percent guarantee, they may not make it into the proposed smaller guarantee pool.But Rashid said that the actual number of African American students affected would only be about a dozen. Each year, about 15 percent of UC applicants are found to be ineligible, although many are strong students with high grades, said aid Michael Brown, chair of the UC faculty academic assembly. Many are rejected because they failed to take the SAT subject exams and others because they had a minor variance from the required curriculum. UC found about 64,000 applicants eligible in 2007. But UC Berkeley journalism Professor William Drummond, who heads the UC Berkeley faculty, said the new system is going to be unpopular with Californians who support the UC system with their taxes and expect that their children will be able to go to college there. "The parents see it as an entitlement," said Drummond, who voted against it in the Academic Assembly. "Now you are going to go back to them and say now there is no guarantee."He is also worried that the new labor-intensive system of individual review will be overwhelming for campuses.(E-mail Tanya Schevitz at tschevitz(at)sfchronicle.com)(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)