Huge Increase in Number of Black Students Admitted to UCLA

This past fall there were only 99 black freshmen who enrolled at the University of California at Los Angeles. They made up just 2 percent of the first-year class.

In an effort to increase diversity in the student body, the UCLA administration adopted a new admissions model that incorporates a so-called “holistic” approach which looks at academic merit in the context of a student’s position in society.

The new UCLA admissions plan produced positive results in increasing the black applicant pool at the university. UCLA received 2,444 applications from black students this year. This was up 12.5 percent from a year ago. Blacks were 5 percent of the applicant pool at UCLA this year.

But the real test of the new plan would be apparent only after it was determined how many blacks were admitted under the new holistic approach. The results are now in. This year there were 392 African Americans admitted to UCLA, up from 249 a year ago. This is a whopping increase of 57 percent. In 2006 blacks were 2.1 percent of all students admitted to UCLA. Blacks are 3.4 percent of the students accepted for admission.

While this is good progress, it must be remembered that blacks are about 7 percent of the college-age population in California. A decade ago, nearly 500 black students were admitted to UCLA.

Copyright © 2007. The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education. All rights reserved.