UC Regents OK Plan to Admit Top 4%

The UC Board of Regents on Friday adopted new admissions rules guaranteeing a seat to all students in the top 4% of their high school class, an idea championed by Gov. Gray Davis as a way to admit more minority students in the post-affirmative action era.

The full board approved without comment the 4% plan, along with another change that will require all UC-bound students to take a visual- or performing-arts class. But it spurned, at least for now, another proposal that would have cut in half the extra grade point awarded to students who take Advanced Placement or honors courses.

Davis campaigned on the 4% plan as a way to increase minority enrollment, which has slipped since the end of affirmative action.

But the plan, crafted by UC faculty, would do little to change the ethnic mix of the student body. A UC analysis shows the plan would open the university to an additional 3,600 students who would not otherwise qualify for admission. Only about 1,800 of those students would actually enroll, and more than half would be white, according to the analysis. This academic year the UC system enrolled 46,000 freshmen.

The plan doesn’t take effect until the fall of 2001, when today’s high school sophomores are entering college. UC officials will notify these students after their junior year, ranking them by their grade-point averages on college prep courses. To remain eligible, these students would have to complete all required courses and take the SAT and SAT II achievement tests.

These students would then be eligible for admission to a UC campus, but not necessarily the campus of their choice. University officials expect these new rules will have little, if any, impact on who gets into UC Berkeley, UCLA or other highly popular campuses.

Davis said he did not support another faculty proposal that would have shaved the extra point awarded to students for AP and honors courses. He said he didn’t want to do anything that would reduce the incentives that motivate students to push themselves.

The university began awarding the extra point in the 1980s to encourage students to take a risk on a challenging AP course, rather than go for the easy A in a routine course. That’s the reason GPAs often exceed 4.0.

But UC faculty have pointed out that the system is unfair to students at poor, inner-city and rural high schools that do not offer many AP courses. Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa, who is a regent by virtue of his office, urged regents to reconsider this proposal or develop other ideas to create a level playing field for all Californians. “It’s not enough to say it’s not fair and not do something about it,” Villaraigosa told the regents on Thursday.

He said he has been asking his colleagues in the Legislature about “fully funding every AP and honors course” so that they are equally available to all students.