High GPAs no longer the key to success
When almost half of the applicants to UCLA have at least a 4.0 GPA, grades alone may no longer be enough to stay competitive, both in gaining admission to UCLA and building a resume good enough to be offered a spot at a top graduate school.
As the number of college applicants continues to increase each year, freshman admissions at UCLA are becoming more selective, affecting the academic and social climate on campus.
In order to compete with more academically prepared classmates, some UCLA students are getting more involved in extracurricular activities while others are becoming more preoccupied with their grades.
UCLA has gone from admitting approximately a third of its freshman applicants in 1998 to admitting a quarter of its freshman applicants for fall 2006.
And of the record-breaking 47,258 freshman applicants for fall 2006 – a 12 percent increase from the class admitted in 2005 – 21,000 had a GPA of 4.0 or above. Beginning in 2007, students applying to the University of California system will also be subject to an increase in the minimum GPA requirement from 2.8 to 3.0.
For some programs, the bar will be set even higher. Transfer students who applied to the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science last fall were required to have a met a new list of courses with a minimum 3.2 GPA.
According to a report issued by the National Association of College Admission Counseling, which deals with issues in higher education, the increasing selectivity is due to a nation-wide trend of rising numbers of college applications.
As the school with the most applicants in the nation, UCLA is especially affected by this trend, said Vu Tran, undergraduate admissions director.
The Southern California weather, beaches, lower public school tuition and one of the best sports programs in the country have always attracted applicants to UCLA, Tran said.
But because the rising number of applicants significantly outpaces UCLA’s increasing rate of enrollment, selectivity may continue to increase as well, he said.
For some areas on campus, this means more students are getting better grades.
English Professor Debora Shuger, who has taught at UCLA since 1989, said there have always been top-tier students at UCLA. The only difference she sees is that students of less academic preparedness have faded from campus.
“I used to routinely give out Fs for first essays, but I rarely do that anymore,” Shuger said.
For other areas on campus, like the engineering school, it means that grading curves are set higher and it is more difficult to get good test scores.
In order to get good grades, students have to concentrate on getting higher scores than classmates, rather than just working on improving their own test scores, said Eric Chrisman, a first-year mechanical engineering student.
For students to be competitive candidates for graduate schools, more is needed than an impressive GPA, said Brian Carlisle, associate dean of student affairs.
“Students are realizing that if they want to go to grad school, they need to be involved in campus activities, volunteer or research programs because you have to be able to show you can take a rigorous workload,” he said.
Chrisman said getting a perfect GPA is not one of his top concerns.
He is a skipper on the sailing team, a member of the ballroom dancing club and will be a project manager for the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics next year.
While the pressure of getting into graduate school may increase interest in student activities, it may also develop an unhealthy preoccupation with grades, said Claudia Mitchell-Kernan, vice chancellor of the graduate division and dean of the UCLA graduate division.
When filling in as vice chancellor of undergraduate student affairs from 2001 to 2002, Mitchell-Kernan was surprised by the amount of academic dishonesty cases and the students who were committing them.
“The students caught weren’t D students just trying to pass a class; they were B students trying to get an A,” Mitchell-Kernan said.
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