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With its announced intent to move toward a more “holistic” model of undergraduate admissions, UCLA will adopt a process modeled after UC Berkeley’s, which has admitted a greater percentage of underrepresented minorities in recent years.

UC Berkeley’s admissions process, which the school has termed “comprehensive review,” has been in place since before affirmative action was banned as a consideration in the University of California’s admissions in 1997.

For UC Berkeley, increasing competition in admissions was a significant factor in moving toward its comprehensive review model.

“Berkeley started using comprehensive review when the number of highly qualified students exceeded the number of spots for those who were UC-eligible,” said Walter Robinson, the director of admissions at UC Berkeley.

By 2006, 90 percent of the more than 37,000 applicants were eligible for admission in terms of test scores and GPA, but UC Berkeley could only admit about one quarter of them. These figures are not uncommon among elite universities.

Using its comprehensive review system, UC Berkeley has generally admitted a higher percentage of underrepresented minority students than UCLA, both before and after the passage of Proposition 209.

At UCLA and UC Berkeley, underrepresented minorities constitute racial and ethnic groups who make up a lesser percentage of the admitted class than of the statewide population – meaning blacks, Latinos and American Indians.

But Berkeley’s admissions process is not without its detractors. Campus administrators said they are not entirely satisfied with minority admissions, and student organizations have vocalized that Berkeley’s ethnic makeup still leaves a lot to be desired.

UC Berkeley’s comprehensive review admissions process differs from UCLA’s current system in that each admissions reader scores applications in their entirety.

UC Berkeley scores each application considering “the full spectrum of the applicant’s qualifications, based on all evidence provided in the application, and viewed in context of the applicant’s academic and personal circumstances and the overall strength of the Berkeley applicant pool,” according to UC Berkeley Office of Undergraduate Admissions Web site.

UCLA takes more of a piecemeal approach, with different readers scoring academic rank, personal achievement rank and life challenge level separately from one another, although a specific numerical weight is not assigned to each factor.

Readers evaluating academic rank consider grade point average, test scores and the strength of a student’s high school course of study.

Personal achievement considerations include extracurriculars, leadership, work experience, community service and honors and awards.

Readers who examine life challenges evaluate the applicants’ “environmental, family and personal situations,” according to the UCLA Office of Undergraduate Admissions and Relations with Schools.

UCLA administrators have said the proposed changes to undergraduate admissions, pending approval by the Academic Senate, are meant to improve overall fairness in admissions.

In a recent interview, Acting Chancellor Norman Abrams was quick to point out that the proposal to alter UCLA’s admissions system is not aimed specifically at increasing the number of black freshmen who enroll.

“The proposals are not meant to address this specific number,” Abrams said. “We are doing this because there needed to be improvement; we don’t know what the consequences will be as far as the specific numbers go.”

At a time when the enrollment of underrepresented minorities has been increasing for the UC overall, UCLA’s numbers are decreasing.

Abrams said this is a consequence of UCLA’s high number of applications, which has “raised the bar.” In 2005, UCLA had more applicants than any other undergraduate institution in the country, about 5,000 more than UC Berkeley.

While the UCLA administration is looking toward UC Berkeley in order to change its current admissions system, those at UC Berkeley are not necessarily satisfied with their own school’s performance.

UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert J. Birgeneau, at his April 2005 inauguration, called the drop in underrepresented minority admissions at Berkeley “appalling,” according to a UC Berkeley press release, and called the situation “a fight for the soul of this institution.”

“The situation for African Americans is truly at the crisis point,” Birgeneau said. “Chicano/Latinos and Native Americans are egregiously underrepresented.”

Though UC Berkeley’s 2006 admissions numbers did not differ greatly from the percentage makeup of the incoming 2005 class, school officials were optimistic.

UC Berkeley’s acting assistant vice chancellor of enrollment and admissions, Susanna Castillo-Robson, said, “We’re pleased, but not satisfied, with the numbers,” according to an Aug. 29 article in the Daily Californian, UC Berkeley’s student newspaper.

Castillo-Robson speculated that the numbers may signify that UC Berkeley is at the start of an upswing of underrepresented minority enrollment.

With reports from Saba Riazati, Bruin reporter.