UC Applications Drop Among Some Minorities

White and Asian American high school students are applying to the University of California in record numbers for the coming fall semester, while applications from some underrepresented minorities have declined, according to statistics released Tuesday.

Overall, 45,939 California high school students applied to UC in the hopes of enrolling this fall--an increase of 5.9% over the previous year. But that surge of applications, submitted just four months after the UC Board of Regents voted to roll back affirmative action, masks a 9.8% drop in American Indian applicants, a 2.3% drop in Latinos and a meager 0.6% rise in African Americans.

By contrast, in the previous two years the number of American Indians, Latinos and African Americans applying to UC rose by several percentage points each year.

Statistics from UC Irvine largely mirrored the state trend. UCI received a record number of applicants for the fall 1996 freshman class: 15,974, a 4.8% increase over last year. Applications from whites and Asian Americans rose about 6%. However, applications to UCI from American Indians dropped 21%, and fell about 7% for Latinos and African American students.

UC officials stressed that it is impossible to know precisely why application rates of different ethnic groups varied so markedly. But some said the regents’ decision last summer to ban race and gender preferences in admissions seemed the most likely cause, despite the fact that the ban has yet to take effect.

The University of California will stop using race and gender as criteria in its undergraduate admissions process, probably beginning with students entering in the spring 1998 semester. The regents are expected to approve such a proposal at their meeting in San Francisco this week.

“Even though the changes have not been made yet, there’s still this feeling of minorities not being welcome,” said Kimi Lee, executive director of the UC Student Assn. “There’s this kind of aura around [UC] now that is negative.”

Meanwhile, the boom in applications from white and Asian American students appeared to indicate that they are feeling more welcome than ever. The number of white applicants rose 8.1%, while Asian Americans were up 5.3%.

“The increase is larger than what one would expect proportionately from these groups, so I have to suspect that they think that they have a better chance of getting in,” said Rae Lee Siporin, UCLA’s director of undergraduate admissions.

If that is what whites and Asians are thinking, Siporin warned, the vast majority of them are destined for disappointment. This year, about 28,000 students have applied to UCLA. Only 11,000 will be admitted.

“We’re going to be turning down over 17,000,” said Siporin. Even if every spot now held by an underrepresented minority were made available to a white or an Asian student, she said, “there is no way to accommodate 17,000.”

The latest UC enrollment figures show that whites make up about 45% of undergraduates, Asian Americans make up 33%, Latinos 14%, African Americans 4% and Native Americans about 1%.

Reactions from UC’s 26-member Board of Regents to the application statistics seemed to reflect their underlying views on affirmative action. The board voted 14 to 10, with one regent abstaining, to eliminate race and gender preferences in admissions.

Regent Ward Connerly, who worked with Gov. Pete Wilson to push through the ban on preferences at UC, said he suspected that the application rates have nothing to do with the regents’ July 1995 decision. But he said it was possible that the vote had “a chilling effect.”

In the aftermath of the vote, he said, “with everybody talking about how we’ve killed affirmative action, there might be the possibility that it has chilled the atmosphere for students from those [underrepresented] groups to apply.”

He then offered another possibility: “That those students who were marginally on the line to be eligible, knowing that they might not get a preference, now say, ‘Why should I apply?’ ”

If that is occurring, he said, “That’s not a bad thing. . . . I don’t think that students who are eligible are going to fall for the belief that somehow they’re no longer welcome” at UC.

Regent Meredith Khachigian, who also supported the elimination of preferences, cautioned against jumping to conclusions. “I don’t think we know what [the statistics] mean unless we interview those people and find out from them directly,” she said. “I do not see any reason for anyone to not have confidence that they will be treated fairly. It is still the regents’ directive to reflect the diversity of the state.”

But Regent Roy Brophy, who voted against the ban, called the statistics “very, very unfortunate.”

“I’m not surprised. The word is getting out that the University of California is not interested in diversity,” he said. “The result is going to show up in the numbers. In three to five years, [UC] is going to be all whites and Asian Americans.”

UC President Richard C. Atkinson, meanwhile, who has just appointed a new outreach task force to recommend ways to help more underrepresented minorities become eligible for UC, issued a statement lamenting the decrease in the number of minorities in the applicant pool.

“We are concerned about the drop,” he said. “ . . . The future of diversity at UC depends on our ability to attract qualified applicants from all ethnic groups.”