Submitted by the Committee on Admissions, Enrollment, and
Preparatory Education (AEPE)
May 2002
This report is dedicated to the memory of Professor Jenny Franchot, Chair of AEPE, 1995-1998
AEPE Committee Membership 2001-02:
Calvin C. Moore, Chair
Fiona Doyle
Susanna Elm
Patricia Penn Hilden
Elaine Kim
Mary Main
John Searle
Mark Wilson
Catherine Ahn (student)
Neelanjan Sircar (student)
Richard Black (Asst. Vice Chancellor, Admissions and Enrollment)
Pamela Burnett (Director, OUA)
This report to the UC Berkeley faculty provides an account of the changes that have been made to the Berkeley undergraduate admissions process since 1995. In order fully to understand these changes and their rationales, and how they built on and grew out of the previous admissions practices, it is necessary to review the historical context beginning with the 1960 Master Plan for Higher Education.
The Master Plan defined the roles of the University, the State University and Community Colleges in California and specified the pool of eligible students for each segment -- for UC, eligibility meant the top 12.5% of high school graduates. Until the early 1970s Berkeley was able to accept all UC eligible applicants to the campus, but over time, applicant pressure grew, and now it vastly exceeds the capacity of the campus. In 2002, the campus was only able to accept about 24% of the freshman applicants, and Berkeley is more selective in freshman admissions than all but a small number of private universities. Increased selectivity and the need to select from among many highly qualified applicants suggested that simple formulas based on high school GPA and test scores used in the past were no longer sufficient. Rather what was required was the consideration and evaluation of much more information about the candidate and an in-depth review of many more aspects of the file, even just to evaluate properly the applicant's academic achievements, not to mention other aspects of candidate's achievement. The circumstances and the context in which the applicant learned and lived, and the barriers that the applicant overcame were important elements that shed light on our understanding of the applicant's achievement and on the applicant’s prospects for success at Berkeley.
The desire for a deeper understanding of the applicant's achievements led the Office of Undergraduate Admissions (OUA), under the overall guidance of the Academic Senate Committee on Admissions, Enrollment, and Preparatory Education (AEPE), in the mid 1980s to begin reading and evaluating comprehensively portions of some freshman applicants files, including the applicants' essay, and the list of activities. At first, just a few hundred files near the boundary between accept and reject were read and evaluated in this limited way. But then over time, a much broader selection of files was read. In 1992, 6000 files were read, and eventually by 1997, over twenty thousand files were read and evaluated each year. Regental resolution SP-1 and later Prop 209 set a new context for Berkeley admissions in 1997. Resolution SP-1, while banning the use of race, ethnicity, sex, or national origin in the admissions process, also asked the campuses to develop criteria to give consideration to candidates who had overcome socio-economic and educational disadvantage. It was recognized that full comprehensive reading of the entire file was the best way to gather and evaluate such information about applicants.
In 1998, after several years of consideration, the campus, under the leadership of the AEPE committee, implemented a new freshman admissions review system which discarded all formulas and dropped the complex matrix system of classifying candidates that had been in use until then. The new review process mandated that every file must be read cover-to-cover (rather than just a portion of the file being read as before) and evaluated and scored comprehensively using established and well developed guidelines and procedures. Two readers read each file and each gave it two scores -- the academic score -- was based on academic achievement including the educational context, and the other -- the comprehensive score--was based on all criteria and the full range of contextual factors.
It is worth noting that an admissions process that is based on human judgments, rather than formulas, requires a substantially larger degree of direct involvement by the faculty than would otherwise be needed. Each year AEPE reviewed the process and made needed adjustments. Faculty are involved throughout the process including policy development, oversight, monitoring, and review of the process and training of the readers. With a careful and well-designed implementation and continual oversight, the process has been found to be a highly reliable one. Such an admissions system is similar to the admissions review process that had been in use by selective private universities for many decades, except that Berkeley has more rigorous checks and balances to help respond to the intense scrutiny it receives as a highly selective public university.
However, the Berkeley process differed in one respect and that was the two-tier admissions construct that had been in effect for many years and which was embedded in regental policy as part of SP-1. This Regental policy required that between 50% and 75% of the students admitted be admitted on academic criteria (Berkeley chose 50%), while the balance were to be admitted on academic plus supplementary criteria. Based on four year's experience with this comprehensive review, the AEPE Committee came to the conclusion in the Spring of 2001 that the bifurcated scoring system just described that was necessitated by the two-tier construct hindered the understanding of the factors that would contribute to a student's success at Berkeley. In addition it interfered with the understanding of the linkage between applicant's personal qualities and life circumstances with their academic achievement as well as how they could contribute to the intellectual and cultural vitality of the campus. Consequently the Committee determined to move to a new system, which was otherwise very much the same and included double reads, but in which readers would give a single unitary score based on all of the criteria, and which would be used for admitting the entire class. The proposal would replace the existing two-tier comprehensive review process with a unitary comprehensive review process. The Divisional Council of the Berkeley Academic Senate endorsed this change, while recognizing that implementation would require a change in Regental policy regarding the two-tier policy construct.
In a complex sequence of events in 2001, the Regents repealed SP-1, and the Academic Senate developed a new University-wide policy concerning comprehensive review. The Regents then approved this policy in November 2001, thereby eliminating the twotier construct. Berkeley was then able to implement the comprehensive unitary review policy for the 2002 admissions cycle. The new unitary scoring system worked as had been predicted in extensive preliminary studies. Readers found it to be simpler review process. The demography of the group of the admitted class was largely unchanged and academic indicators such as average high school GPA and average test scores were up from the previous year.
Comprehensive review, which has now been in place for five years for freshman admissions, has been a success. High school counselors tell the campus that the process is making better decisions from their perspective. From reading a sampling of files, it is evident that the new review process is admitting many talented and outstanding applicants that the faculty want to have on the campus and who would have been missed by the previous review process. Traditional academic indicators are up, and for the last four years, the admit rate for underrepresented minorities has been nearly equal to the overall admit rate for all applicants. Thus, the group of students admitted does generally encompass the diversity of the applicant pool and also of the pool of UC eligible high school graduate. That the applicant pool and the pool of UC eligible high school graduates do not yet encompass the diversity of California high school graduates is a pressing and serious societal problem facing the State and the University.
In light of the emphasis that the 1960 California Master Plan for Higher Education places on the transfer function and a second pathway to UC through completion of two years work in a Community College, the review process for advanced standing admissions is of considerable importance. Moreover, advanced standing admissions have become almost as selective as freshman admissions. Based on five years of successful experience with comprehensive review for freshman admissions, the AEPE Committee has moved to convert the advanced standing admissions process to the full comprehensive review model that is now in place for freshman. Right now, a large fraction of the advanced standing files are read and scored comprehensively, but for 2003, the plan is, budget considerations permitting, that all applicant files will be read and scored in a comprehensive unitary process.
Comprehensive review based on a reading and evaluation of the file by professional staff is inherently less transparent to the various publics of the campus than a formula based process with well-defined cutoffs. Although readers are making subjective human judgements in their scoring, these scores have been demonstrated to be highly reliable. Two trained professional readers score each file independently and when scores are discrepant by a significant amount, an experienced third reader resolves the discrepancy. The percentage of freshman applicant files requiring a third read in 2002 was remarkably -- only low 1.3%. As a public university, UC Berkeley has a unique obligation, which is not fully shared by private universities, to articulate and explain its admission process to the public. This report is one such attempt, of many, to achieve this goal.
The Berkeley undergraduate admissions process and the context of that process have changed dramatically since 1995. Increased numbers of applications for admission and the need to select from among many highly qualified applicants set the stage for fundamental changes in the admissions process. The passage of SP-1 in 1995 by the Regents and the subsequent passage of Proposition 209 in 1996 by the California voters, both of which became effective in 1998, were important elements of the context of the changes and in subsequent events. Deliberations started in 1995 in the Senate Committee on Admissions, Enrollment and Preparatory Education (AEPE) to change from a more formulaic method of evaluation and to move to a process in which much more information was evaluated and multiple criteria were brought to bear comprehensively on the admissions decision. This comprehensive review process was implemented for the freshman admissions for the fall of 1998. The implementation of a unitary scoring process for the freshman admissions cycle for Fall 2002, and the elimination of the two-tier admissions process that had been mandated by SP-1 was a another significant change. Finally, AEPE has determined to change the admissions review process for advanced standing applications to a full comprehensive unitary process beginning with the 2003 admissions cycle.
The AEPE Committee has issued a number of reports on these changes as they were occurring, including a Preliminary Report in January of 1999 shortly after the first admissions cycle was completed under comprehensive review, and a number of reports by the Chair of AEPE to the Divisional Council and at Divisional meetings. However, the time has come to issue a more complete and retrospective report to the faculty on these changes, which took place over the period from 1995 to 2002. Indeed until now, events have managed to outpace efforts to prepare such a report. The 1999 Preliminary Report and copies of periodic reports to the Division are included in Appendix I. Professor Jenny Franchot of the Department of English assumed the Chair of (AEPE) in 1995 and served as Chair, overseeing the changes until her sudden and unexpected death in October 1998. Professor Calvin Moore of the department of Mathematics then assumed the Chair position and served in that role until August 2002. This report is dedicated to the memory of Professor Franchot.
The California Master Plan for Higher Education, passed by the Legislature in 1960, mandated the University of California to make eligible the top 12.5% of high school graduates in the State and to choose its entering freshman class from among these students. As implemented by the University, this provision of the Master Plan has become in effect a social contract between the University and the people of the State of California. Under its terms, every California high school graduate who is eligible for UC and who wishes to attend will be accommodated within the University, although not necessarily at the campus of choice or in the program of choice. Thus no UC eligible student will be denied a UC education.
The definition of UC eligibility has been left to the University to specify, and there are currently three pathways by which a high school student can become UC eligible. The first of these is by means of a statewide index. Students are required to take a specified pattern of UC approved college preparatory courses and are required to take certain standardized tests: the SAT I or the ACT plus three SAT II subject matter tests. A student is index-eligible if his or her grade point average in UC approved college preparatory courses and the standardized test scores, taken in combination, exceed a specified index level. This level is set so as to make the projected number of students that become eligible comport with the Master Plan. Details may be found in university publications or websites. The second route is called Eligibility in the Local Context (ELC -- also known as the 4% plan.) Students become eligible in this pathway at the end of their junior year if they are on track to complete the specified college preparatory course paten and rank in the top 4% of their high school class on the basis of grades in these UC approved college preparatory courses. Many ELC students of course end up becoming index eligible as well. The third pathway is eligibility by test scores alone where sufficiently high test scores on the standardized tests qualify a student as eligible. Less than 1% of all UC eligible students qualify on this pathway alone.
For some years the Berkeley campus was able to accommodate all eligible freshman applicants who wished enroll on the campus, but beginning in the early 1970s, that was no longer possible. Several factors contributed to the change. The Berkeley campus had reached its physical capacity for enrollment; the population of the State had grown, and the proportion of high school graduates seeking a college education had increased. Finally, with the change in 1986 to an open filing system in which applicants could apply to as many UC campuses as they wished, application pressure on the campus increased substantially. The number of freshman applicants to Berkeley remained fairly steady from 1986 through 1994 at about 20,000 applicants of which about 40%, with some fluctuations, were accepted for admission. Then starting in 1995, the number of applicants began to rise steadily and steeply, reaching 36,500 in 2002. This increase is the result of what Clark Kerr has termed Tidal Wave II, and consists of the children of the post-war baby boom generation. This baby boom generation, which was termed Tidal Wave I, resulted in sharp increases in university enrollment in the mid-1960s, and Tidal Wave II is coming through, as predicted, just about 30 years later. The yield, or percentage of those admitted who subsequently enroll has averaged about 43% for a number of years, with some small fluctuations.
Overall, the change has been gradual, but over time, the end result is dramatic. In the Fall 2002 admissions cycle the campus was only able to admit only 24% of the freshman applicants (of 36,500 applicants, 8,700 will be admitted to fill 3,770 seats in the freshman class.) In one generation, Berkeley has gone from an institution that could accept all eligible applicants to one that is now as selective as all but a handful of private colleges and universities. There is every reason to believe that these trends will not change, and that enrollment pressure on the campus will continue to grow.
The corresponding evolution of admissions policies and practices accelerated after the mid-eighties when the onset of multiple filing sharply increased the number of applicants and hence increased the selectivity. In addition public policy discussion and debate about the ethnic and racial makeup of the entering class influenced the admissions process. Several AEPE reports helped shape this evolution, including the Karabel Report (1989), the Grubb Report (1992), and the Leonard Report (1993), and this report follows and builds on these prior reports.
The applicant pool to Berkeley is highly qualified. About 91% of the current freshman applicants are UC eligible, which means essentially that they have completed the UC approved college preparatory curriculum in high school, done well in it, and have taken and received good scores on the standardized admissions tests that are prescribed. Indeed, based on the experience of AEPE and the Admissions office, and the analysis of student achievement, it can be safely assumed that some 85-90% of the applicants are students who, if they were admitted to Berkeley, would very likely do well and thrive here, and would graduate and go onto successful careers. The choices in the admissions process are therefore not between qualified and unqualified applicants, but rather among highly qualified applicants.
The processes developed to select students to be admitted to Berkeley have evolved along with the change in the applicant pool and selectivity. Prior to the need to select from among eligible applicants, the admissions process was largely a clerical task of determining eligibility. In the early 1970s when campuses first began to select from among eligible applicants, Vice President Kidner issued a policy statement mandating that each campus select 50% of its class on the basis of academic criteria and the remaining 50% on the basis of academic and supplemental non-academic criteria. The apparent rationale for this policy was to spread out among all campuses the most academically qualified applicants and not have most or all of them concentrated at the only two selective campuses, Berkeley and UCLA. In 1988 this policy was modified in a Presidential policy statement to specify a range of 40-60% of the class to be admitted on academic criteria, and the rest on academic plus supplemental criteria.
In 1995, the Regents incorporated into SP-1 as Regental policy a prescription that each campus select from 50% to 75% of the freshman students it admits based on academic criteria with the balance on academic plus supplemental criteria. This policy superceded the previous presidential policy. It might be noted that the apparent rationale for this new policy seemed to invert the rationale for the 1971 policy. The policy in effect mandated a two-tier system, which consisted of tier-one applicants who had been admitted on academic criteria and tier-two students who had been admitted on academic plus other criteria. Berkeley opted for 50% of the admits to be selected on academic criteria.
Prior to 1998, the selection process for tier one was a formulaic one based on what became known as the Academic Index Score (AIS). This was computed by multiplying the High School GPA (including honors and AP bonus points, but with the GPA capped at 4.0) by 1,000 and then adding the scores on all five required standardized admissions tests. The maximum points possible on the AIS was 8,000, and tier-one admissions was done by lining up applicants by AIS and cutting off at the score needed to give the right number of tier-one admits.
The tier-two procedures were more complex and they evolved into a process whereby student were arranged into cells in a two dimensional matrix array with academic criteria along one axis and supplemental along the other axis. Many factors entered into the supplemental ranking, including extracurricular activities, excellence in athletics, low socio-economic status or evidence that the student had overcome disadvantage or obstacles; race and ethnicity played a role as one of the many supplemental criteria. The Bakke decision in the US Supreme Court (1978) permitted use of race and ethnicity as one criterion among many for university admissions, and this practice was also permitted under University policy and State law until 1998. In the mid-eighties, the admissions office staff as part of the tier-two admissions process began to read portions, including the personal statement and list of activities, of some applicants’ files. The number of files read started out at several hundred, which were on the boundary between accept and reject. Over the years more and more files were read and evaluated – 6,000 in 1992, until ultimately all non-tier one files were read in 1997. All files in certain cells in the array described above were read in this manner. However until the end of this period, the cases to be read were still selected from a larger pool. The reading and scoring protocols had evolved over several years , but had not been the subject of systematic, structured, and in depth policy review and development by the AEPE Committee. Nevertheless, this reading process developed in the Office of Undergraduate Admission (OUA) invaluable expertise and experience with comprehensive review, and was a transition to what was to come.
In August 1995 Professor Jenny Franchot became Chair of AEPE, and the committee under her leadership engaged in a fundamental re-thinking of the freshman admissions process. First of all, there was considerable dissatisfaction with the algorithmic process for tier-one admissions. With many more applicants with a weighted GPA exceeding 4.0 (which was then capped at 4.0) than there were tier-one slots, the formulaic tier-one process was in effect making the admissions decision solely on the test scores. Small and likely insignificant differences in test scores, and in some cases, grades were the basis of decisions. In addition, a large amount of important and potentially useful information was not even incorporated into the review. This information included the actual transcript listing courses that were taken, and evidence that would have shown the extent to which the student challenged him or herself by taking difficult and rigorous courses. Trend patterns in the grades become evident only when the transcript is analyzed in detail. The file also contained information about AP tests, or other academic achievements and honors that had not been used in the formulaic approach. Finally significant information about how the student did relative to classmates, and contextual information about the educational climate in the high school could be available, but was not used. This information could only be extracted and used by a full reading and evaluation of the file along with school contextual information and data.
At the same time, the Regents had passed SP-1 in July 1995, which while banning the use of race, ethnicity etc. in admissions, also asked the campuses to design admissions criteria and processes that considered socio-economic and educational disadvantage. Section 4 of SP-1 specifically mandated development of criteria that give consideration "to individuals who, despite having suffered disadvantage economically or in terms of their social environment (such as an abusive or otherwise dysfunctional home or a neighborhood of unwholesome or antisocial influences), have nevertheless sufficient character and determination in overcoming obstacles to warrant confidence that the applicant can pursue a course of study to successful completion.…" The campus had already been developing such processes and realized that the only way to extract and evaluate information about such circumstances was again by utilizing a cover-to-cover reading of the applicant's file. Moving away from the previous process to one that relied on broader array of socio-economic and educational indicators required more information about the applicant and the school context, and a much more complex, subtle, and multi-dimensional process has to be employed to meet the new circumstances.
Consequently the AEPE committee made the fundamental decision to move to a process of comprehensive review whereby every freshman applicant file would be read cover-to-cover and evaluated on the basis of a wide spectrum of criteria and information about the applicants -- their achievements, both academic and otherwise, their educational, socio-economic, family context, and their personal qualities. What they might contribute to the campus if they were admitted was also assessed. The criteria were fully laid out and systematized in guidelines prepared by the AEPE Committee in concert with the Office of Undergraduate Admissions (OUA) over a period of two years. The new guidelines were ready in the Fall of 1997 for use in the admissions cycle for admitting freshmen who would enter in the Fall of 1998.
The change in procedures was fundamentally driven by two circumstances: an increase in selectivity, which meant that the campus had to choose from among many highly qualified candidates, and the desire to bring much more information to bear on these important decisions. AEPE realized that this change to comprehensive review would impose additional workload on the admissions staff, a workload that would be concentrated and extraordinarily intense for periods of time. The new process would also entail investment of additional resources in the admissions office. But, it was believed that the benefits of such a new system would far outweigh these considerations, and increased resources were indeed made available to OUA to implement the new admissions system.
It is worth noting that an admissions process that is based on human judgments rather than formulas requires a substantially larger degree of direct involvement by the faculty than would otherwise be needed. Each year AEPE reviewed the process and made needed adjustments. Faculty are directly involved throughout the admissions process - - in policy development, in oversight, monitoring, and review of the process, and in training of the readers. The process was not a static one. Rather the AEPE committee reviewed the process each year since its inception and has made changes each year based on the experiences in previous years. The committee also recognized that the freshman admissions process had to be grounded in fundamental principles that articulate institutional goals and objectives. The AEPE committee had from the start a sense of the nature of these principles, but only articulated them more precisely as the process evolved. The following Guiding Principles for Undergraduate Admission were developed and approved by the Committee:
1. The admissions process honors academic achievement and accords priority to students of exceptional academic accomplishment. At the same time, the decisionmaking process employs a broad and multifaceted definition of merit, including an assessment of contributions that a student will make to the intellectual, cultural, or other aspects of campus life.
2. Each applicant is judged individually and comprehensively and all achievements are evaluated in the context in which the student learned and lived, as well as the opportunities available to the student and how he or she responded to challenges. !In keeping with Berkeley's status as a public institution, ability to pay fees and expenses is never a criterion in the admission decision.
3. The admission process should select students of whom the campus will be proud, and who give evidence that they will use their education to make contributions to the intellectual, cultural, social, and political life of the State and the Nation.
4. The admissions process should further the Regents' Policy that each campus should enroll a "...student body... that encompasses the broad diversity of cultural, racial, geographic, and socio-economic backgrounds characteristic of California." The process must also comport with state law, including Proposition 209.
5. The admissions process should select only those students whose academic preparation ensures a strong likelihood that they will persist to graduation.
6. The process should consider each applicant fairly, given the information available to the campus, and should seek to be perceived as fair by the various publics of the campus.
As noted already, a system of comprehensive review as established by AEPE first of all requires substantial involvement of faculty in the process beginning with the development of the policy documents and guidelines. But then there is a corresponding involvement in overseeing and monitoring the process itself and then in making needed changes based on experience and observation of the process. The process in place for 1998 through 2001 was fairly stable and the policy document that guided the process did not undergo substantial change. One change mandated by the AEPE committee for the 1999 cycle was increased attention to the context of the student's educational achievement. Staffs in OUA were able simultaneously to design software that would provide readers a vastly increased amount of contextual data. Another change that was made was to reduce generally the amount of weight placed on standardized tests and to ask the readers to place relatively more weight on the SAT II achievement tests as opposed to the SAT I tests, a choice that reflected the weighting in the new UC eligibility index. Yet another change was to use both the weighted HSGPA (which includes the bonus grade point for AP and UC approved Honors courses, as well as the un-weighted HSGPA. Previously, only the weighted HSGPA had been used in the evaluation process. A copy of the 2001 policy document in attached in Appendix A, and a description of the process that was used for these four years follows below. The process did undergo a significant change for the 2002 cycle and that will be explained subsequently.
The admissions process in use for 1998-2001 was controlled by the two-tier admissions policy contained in SP-1. This two-tier policy construct dictated that the scoring be bifurcated so that each reader first scored the file based on academic criteria, which were laid out in an underlying policy document attached to this report. Readers were asked to consider the rigor and depth of the curriculum that the applicant undertook, including the total number of college preparatory courses, the number of honors and AP courses, the level of achievement in these courses, including how the GPA placed them in the total applicant pool and among all applicants from their high school, scores on standardized admissions tests, achievement in academic enrichment programs, and achievement in other academic activities (such as academic decathlon, mathematics and science competitions, and recognition, awards, or prizes for writing, artistic, or musical composition.)
The readers were asked to evaluate each applicant in the context of the educational environment -- the nature of the school, the number of honors and AP courses that are available, whether there is a culture in the school that supports and recognizes achievement and encourages students to prepare for and go on to a college education. The readers gave consideration to students who have achieved in spite of educational disadvantage, who have overcome obstacles in the school, who had challenged themselves, who had taken full advantage of the opportunities that were available, and who had shown intellectual independence and maturity. Students who have shown these academic characteristics are students who are likely to do well at Berkeley. Using these criteria, readers gave each file an academic score of one to seven (with one high).
The readers then took into account all criteria -- academic and non-academic and gave the file a Comprehensive score. The criteria for this score included all of the academic criteria plus consideration of non academic criteria, such as participation in athletics, student government, musical or dramatic performances or productions, journalistic work such as with the school newspaper or yearbook, forensics, or community service activities. The readers were asked to look for signs of sustained involvement in such activities, achievement, especially achievement beyond the school level. They were also asked to consider evidence of leadership such as being elected team captain, success in league or regional competitions, selection to a city or regional orchestra, and selection as editor of publications. Consideration was given to personal characteristics such as determination and creativity, as these are signs of potential for success at Berkeley. Readers also gave consideration in their scoring to what the applicant might contribute to the intellectual and cultural life of the campus were they to be admitted and come.
Finally, readers were asked to consider in the comprehensive score a wider variety of contextual factor above and beyond those considered in the academic score. These factors could include socio-economic disadvantage and evidence that the applicant has made significant achievement in spite of such disadvantage. If the student had to work in order to help support the family or if they had significant responsibilities in the home for care of younger siblings, especially in single parent families or in families that are dysfunctional, these factors could be considered. The reader could evaluate how these circumstances affected the student's opportunities and how the student achieved in spite of these circumstances. The personal statement can be a rich source of information for reaching judgments concerning such matters. The personal statement is the one place where the readers can "hear the voice" of the applicant and gain insight into the context of the achievements. Using all of this evidence, the reader assigned a comprehensive score on a five-point scale (one high).
As decisions were explicitly based in part on the personal statement and other information in the file about extracurricular activities, the reliability of information becomes an issue. How does the faculty or OUA know that the personal statement is the applicant's own, and has not been downloaded from some internet site or has been written by someone else? It is the policy of the university that the personal statement fundamentally be authored by the applicant. It is understood that just as faculty members seek comments from colleagues on work in draft form, applicants may also seek comment and advice from teachers, counselors, or parents on their personal statement. Nevertheless, such advice and comment cannot go beyond generally accepted norms. Readers have found that it is very easy to spot essays where an adult went beyond proper bounds. The University will begin a process of random spot checks whereas a small number of randomly selected students will be asked to provide verification of all activities listed in the application. The fact that UC is doing this will become known and will tend to suppress fabrication. In general, self-reported data on application forms, when checked in the past, were almost completely free of major errors. OUA has come to the conclusion - based on years of experience - that the selfreported information in the applicant files, while not perfect, is highly reliable.
Beginning in 1998 each file was read and scored by two readers, where the second reader did not know the scores given by the first reader. If the scores given by the two readers differed by no more than one point, then they were averaged to form an aggregate score. If scores differed by more than one point, the file was referred to a third reader who was an experienced lead reader who then resolved the discrepancy.
Possible academic scores ran from 1.0 !to 7.0 in steps of 0.5 and similarly comprehensive scores range from 1.0 to 5.0, again in 0.5 increments. The percentage of files requiring a third read for either an academic score or a comprehensive score difference of more than one point was a very respectably low 6% in 1998, the first year of the process, and it fell to less than 3% in 2001.
After the reading process was completed, the actual admissions process began. Freshman enrollment targets and then a freshman admissions targets were established by the Executive Vice Chancellor for each of the five undergraduate colleges that accepts freshmen (L&S, Engineering, Chemistry, CNR, and CED). The target in L&S was a single pool, but the Professional Colleges normally have set enrollment subtargets for each individual major program. The tier-one target for each of these pools was 50% of the total admissions target, and applicants to these colleges or departments were arrayed by academic score and the top ones admitted up to the target. If all applicants with academic scores of up to certain level could be admitted within the target, but addition of the applicants with scores at the next level exceeded the target, then a tie-breaking process began. All the files with the cut academic score were then reread and reevaluated and the desired number of applicants were selected to fill out the target number.
These tier-one students were admitted and removed from the pool. Then the remaining students were arrayed by comprehensive score and the top ones were admitted up to a target, and again if the exact target did not correspond to a cut point in scores, a tiebreaking process ensued for each separate pool so the desired number of students would be admitted. The total target for admission on comprehensive score was less than 50% of the total target as some places were set aside for admission through the Augmented Review process (to be described shortly), for admission of recruited athletes, for admission of students with disabilities or special talents, and for appeals. Overall the campus has been admitting about 8,800 applicants (less than a quarter of the applicants) for the Fall to get an entering freshman class of approximately 3,800 students.
In Letters and Sciences and for a few Engineering applicants, the campus has had for a number of years a process of Spring admissions for students just below the accept line for Fall admission. The campus admitted 2,500 students for Spring, expecting to enroll about 900. Half of these were admitted on the academic score (tier one) and the other half on the basis of comprehensive score (tier-two) with tie breaking for each pool. These additional students could be accommodated by the campus because a certain number of students graduate in December, thus making room for additional students to enroll. About 600 of the students who accept Spring admission can be accommodated in the University Extension Fall program, where students can take, through Extension, a curriculum similar to that that they would have taken had they been admitted for the Fall. Thus their progress to a degree is not impeded by their being admitted only for the Spring. The Fall Extension Program is able to accommodate about 85-90% of the students who wish to enroll in it. Some students who accept Spring admission take advantage of the time during the fall for work, travel, or relaxation before beginning their college studies.
During the 2000-01 academic year, the AEPE committee in its deliberations came to the conclusion that the elimination of the two-tier process and its replacement by a singletier unitary process would be highly desirable. The committee debated various options and settled on a new process where each file would be read and evaluated as before by two readers, but where each reader would give the file a single score -- which came to be called the unitary score -- in which the reader would evaluate the applicant on the entire range of academic and non-academic criteria and would take account of all of the contextual factors, educational and otherwise in arriving at the score. The entire freshman class would be admitted on the basis of this unitary score, with the exception of a relatively small number of Augmented Review admits, as described below, and athletes.
There are many advantages to such an admissions process system over the process as it had existed. First of all, the academic and supplemental factors, including personal characteristics are often inextricably intertwined with each other in most individual cases and are very difficult to separate. The separation is artificial and it is as if one first reviews the file with one eye closed and then only opens the other eye for the comprehensive score. The separation creates constant ambiguity as which factors can be counted in which part of the review and is inconsistent with the basic idea of looking at the applicant as a whole person. Indeed the bifurcation almost always serves to narrow our understanding of the qualities that contribute to strong academic performance and to other kinds of success as an undergraduate.
Such a unitary process is more intellectually coherent, and in addition would be simpler and more intelligible to the readers to implement. Such practical considerations are not irrelevant when there are 36,000 files to be scored and evaluated. Moreover the selective private schools had used such a process without tiers successfully for many decades, and the two-tiered process that we had been using was rather an anomaly in selective institutions. Finally, even though no individual student knows whether he or she was admitted in tier one or tier two, the two-tier system tends to stigmatize a group of students as being somehow less worthy than the students who had been admitted in the first tier on academic grounds.
For all of these reasons, the Committee felt that a unitary reading and scoring process would be strongly preferable. Indeed looking back to the committee deliberations on comprehensive review in 1995, one sees that the same arguments were made at that time in favor of a unitary scoring system. During 2000-01, the Committee worked steadily to develop a policy document that would serve as the basis for such a new admissions process, and approved it unanimously. The policy document was forwarded to the Divisional Council where it was debated and then endorsed unanimously. The only problem was that such an admissions process was contrary to Regental policy as articulated in section 4 of SP-1, which mandated a two-tier system. Approvals of the proposed new policy were granted with the full understanding that either a change of Regental policy or an exception to existing policy would be required in order to implement it. It is natural to ask why then was the Committee willing to expend all of this effort to craft such a new admissions process that was in conflict with Regental policy? The reason was that there were unmistakable signs even in the early Fall of 2000 that SP-1 might be in play in the Spring of 2001 and that there would likely be movements made to modify or repeal it at the May 2001 Regents meeting.
As is well known now, that is exactly what happened at the May Regents meeting although events took some unexpected turns. The campus sent forth in early May a request to President Atkinson and Academic Council Chair Cowan for an exception to section 4 of SP-1 in order to be able to implement the comprehensive unitary admissions process that had been crafted during the year. A copy of the fully developed policy describing the proposed unitary process accompanied the letter, and both of these documents are attached to this report in Appendix B. In this new process the admissions criteria, which previously had been bifurcated, were combined into a single list, but taken altogether remained the same, and the same elements in the file were used for making decisions. There would be the same protocol for double reading of each file and the same protocols for triggering a third read in case of discrepant scores. Enhanced contextual information would be made available to readers. Tiebreaking processes and Spring admissions would be continued as before.
The outcome of the May Regents meeting was that SP-1 was repealed but the Regents left their two tier policy construct in place temporarily, and asked the Academic Senate to make a recommendation to the Board on that issue. The Senate did develop a policy of comprehensive review, which eliminated the two-tier policy construct and presented it to the Board in November 2001. The Senate's recommendation was approved by the Regents, and Berkeley then had the green light to implement the new unitary review process for the Fall 2002 admissions cycle.
It was not anticipated that changing from a two-tier comprehensive review process to a unitary comprehensive review process would significantly change the number of underrepresented students admitted. Statistical studies of the academic and comprehensive scoring process and extrapolations from them to a unitary scoring process lent support to that conclusion. This was later confirmed by a direct beta test of the unitary scoring system during the Summer and early Fall of 2001. This beta test was also a key element in the preparation on the campus for implementation of unitary scoring as well as a key element in the Regental discussion on comprehensive review. The AEPE Committee had developed reader guidelines based on the policy document. The guidelines established a numerical scoring scale. The same provisions as before for averaging the scores of the two readers when they differ by no more than one point and for third reads in the case of discrepant scores were included.
Over the summer, a group of experienced readers was trained and normed on the proposed guidelines. Then a randomly selected !group of 1000 freshman applications from the 2001 cycle was compiled and then read and scored by this group of readers. On the basis of this scoring, 24% of these applicants were "admitted", and the results compared with the actual outcomes the year before for these files. The results of this test are enclosed in Appendix D. The demographics of the unitary "admits" looked roughly the same as compared to the real admits, and the average academic indicators for the unitary "admits" was slightly higher than for the real admits the year before. As of this writing we now have the actual results of the 2002 freshman application cycle, and they are just as the beta test would have predicted.
The tie-breaking process under unitary review and scoring is much simpler to manage than under the two-tier system, which involved a tie-breaking for tier-one fall admits, a second !tie-breaking !for tier-two fall admits, then a tie-breaking for tier-one for Spring admits and a final tie-breaking for tier-two spring admits. In a unitary process there is a single tie-breaking with a trifurcated outcome -- accept Fall, accept Spring, or reject.
Over a period of several years the AEPE Committee has developed an additional component of the admissions process that came to be called Augmented Review (AR). In 2002, this Augmented Review process matured and is now an important component of the admission process. In essence it is a way of identifying a relatively small number of files which are particularly difficult cases, where information may be missing, or where there are special or unusual circumstances, and then focusing additional time and attention on these particularly difficult and complex cases. The readers are provided with guidelines drafted and approved by AEPE for referral to AR. These guidelines, which are attached as Appendix C list as criteria for referral evidence of unusual hardships that may not have not been fully described and that may have affected the student's achievement, evidence of unusual or special achievements in one area about which more information would be helpful, evidence of participation in outreach programs, but where evidence of achievement or the student's intellectual growth in these program is missing, or that the reader believes that additional information of some substantive kind is needed to reach a decision. Applicants indicating that they have some kind of disability are also referred to the AR process in order to obtain and analyze additional information about the disability.
The readers apply these criteria and make recommendations of cases to be referred to AR. !If the lead reader agrees with the recommendation, the file is referred to AR and the applicant is sent a five-page questionnaire that requires paragraph length narrative answers. This questionnaire provides not only useful information but also provides additional samples of the student's writing. The applicant is asked to submit 7th semester grades and is invited to have letters of recommendation sent from teachers, counselors, or outreach counselors. The augmented file is the re-reviewed in an AR reading process and is scored independently by two readers. In 2002, nearly 2000 files were referred to Augmented Review, of which about 550 were admitted. These constitute about 6% of total applicants and 6% of admits. Just like the tie-breaking process this is an instance where additional effort and attention is focused on the most difficult cases. Only a handful of the applicants who are referred to AR or who are admitted through the AR process are UC ineligible.
In the course of its work the AEPE Committee has developed a policy on admission of out-of-state students which attempts to balance the responsibility of UC as a state supported institution to educate California students with the benefits which out of state and international students bring to the campus. The policy is attached in Appendix G. The Committee has also begun a review of the policies and practices concerning admission of athletes. This work is not yet complete, but a discussion and progress report on the work is included in Appendix H. The Committee has addressed the policy issues concerning Advanced Standing Admissions, which is discussed in the following section and in Appendix F.
Policies and practices for admission of advanced standing transfer students to the Berkeley campus do not attract as much attention as those for freshmen, but they are of great significance to the campus, not least because of the role assigned to the California Community Colleges and the transfer function in the Master Plan. The 1960 California Master Plan for Higher Education established as one of its central features a second pathway into the University in addition to freshman admission, whereby students who successfully complete two years of work at a California Community College (CCC) can transfer to UC as advanced standing students. The Master Plan specifies a notion of eligibility for advanced standing applicants to UC from California Community Colleges, and the University has entered into a social contract, just as it has at the freshman level. All UC eligible advanced standing applicants from California Community Colleges will be admitted to UC, although not necessarily at their campus or program of choice. A CCC student is deemed UC eligible if he or she has successfully completed two years of work in transferable courses with a GPA of 2.4 (2.0 if the applicant was UC eligible upon graduation from high school) and has met appropriate lower division breadth and major preparation requirements.
The Master Plan goes on to specify quantitatively the expected role of the transfer function and sets as a goal for University of California (as well as the California State University) that at least 60 percent of the undergraduate enrollment should consist of upper-division students. One straightforward way to check conformity with the Master Plan 60:40 ratio would be by determining the number of units completed by each student. However, an alternative test for conformity that is more operational, and more closely linked to the admissions process, and which is likely closer to the intent of the Maser Plan is that there should be at least one new advanced standing transfer student entering UC for every two new freshmen entering. Not all transfer students come from the California Community Colleges, but in practice the overwhelming majority -- about 85% -- have come from the CCC. An additional quantitative expectation has been established more recently. In 1997, at the urging of the Governor and the Legislature, the University of California and the California Community Colleges entered into a formal Memorandum of Understanding, in which UC pledged to increase the yearly number of CCC transfers to UC (all campuses) from 10,900 in 1995-96 to 14,500 by 2005- 06. In 1999, the agreement was renegotiated, and the target figure for 2005-06 was raised to 15,500.
Currently about 65% of Berkeley's undergraduate enrollment consists of upper division students, although this proportion is higher than what might be expected in light of enrollment numbers because of the substantial number of college credits from Advanced Placement Examinations that many freshman students bring with them--a phenomenon that was not anticipated in the 1960 Master Plan. Enrollments of new freshman and advanced standing students are close to, but fall a bit short of a 2 to 1 ratio; in Fall 2002 new freshmen enrollments are expected to be 3,770 while new advanced standing enrollments are expected to be 1830.
Advanced standing admissions process, just like the freshman admissions process, has become quite selective over time. In the 1970 s the campus was able to accept all UC eligible advanced standing applicants, but for 2002, there were about 9,100 applicants of which about 2,600, or just under 29% could be accepted. The yield, or the percent of those accepted who enroll has been about 68%, which is rather higher than the yield on freshman admissions, which has run as noted at about 43% in recent years. The pool of applicants for advanced standing admissions has contained in most years a slightly about percentage of underrepresented minorities as compared to the pool of applicants for freshman admission. This year the advanced standing applicant pool follows this pattern with 19.0% underrepresented minorities versus 17.4% for the freshman pool.
Although the Academic Senate Committee on Admissions, Enrollment, and Preparatory Education has the responsibility for policy development and oversight of advanced standing admissions, the actual advanced standing admissions process is more decentralized than for freshman admissions. Advanced standing admissions for the Professional Schools and Colleges are handled in the Dean's offices of these Schools and Colleges. The AEPE Committee has met with representatives of all of the Deans, and has reviewed the advanced standing admissions policies and practices of these Schools and Colleges. In consultation with all the Deans, the AEPE Committee will develop general policy guidelines for advanced standing admissions for the campus. The Office of Undergraduate Admissions handles all of the advanced standing admissions for applicants to the College of Letters and Sciences. The Committee has drawn up a policy document for advanced standing admissions to L&S.
Currently, the Professional Schools and Colleges use a single-tier unitary process of evaluation in their admissions process. The process used for applicants to the College of Letters and Sciences is however a two-tier process. About 15% of the applicants with the highest GPA in their transferable work are admitted, although some review of whether major prerequisites have been satisfied enters into this review process. A middle group, again based on GPA of about 40% of the applicants have their files read comprehensively and scored independently by two readers, and the highest ranked applicants are admitted up to the target, just as in the freshman process. The bottom 45% of the files based on GPA are denied, although some kinds of files are reviewed individually. This process is not in accord with the general principles that AEPE has established for undergraduate admissions, and AEPE has drafted and approved a new comprehensive unitary review policy and process for advanced standing admissions to L&S that will be for implemented in the 2003 admissions cycle. This document is attached in Appendix F. This new unitary comprehensive review process for advanced standing admissions would have been implemented a year earlier, but was delayed by partial hiring freezes, and an inadequate amount of time to hire and train the additional corps of readers that would be necessary.
The readers who evaluate and score the individual files are key to the review process, and great care in the selection, the training, and the supervision of them is essential. While many private universities had done this kind of evaluation for decades, and hence provide a model for us, the number of files that have to be evaluated is much larger than any private university had handled, and the scaling problem was daunting.
Based on experience, a time budget of an average of 10-12 minutes per read was established. It was recognized that this as an average and that some cases might take less time, while other cases take more time. The test scores from the ETS or ACT and the applicants’ files themselves are not available from the application processor until about January 1, and so the reading cannot start until then. Moreover, since the month of March is needed to complete the review process after the production reading is complete in order to have the decision letters in the mail by the end of March, the production reading has to take place during the two month period of January and February.
About half the readers are professional career admissions officers and outreach officers in the Office of Undergraduate Admissions (OUA). As these officers normally have other duties during this period they cannot generally devote more than half time to file reading. For instance, the Director and her management team of Associate and Assistant Directors all participate in file reading. This corps of career staff is supplemented by a group of temporary readers who are hired for the period of file reading, usually at about half time, so half the reading is done by internal career staff and half is done by the temporary readers.
These positions are advertised, applications are reviewed, and the best qualified candidates are selected, many of whom have read in previous years. Some have as many as 10 years experience. These temporary readers include retired or former career staff in OUA, current and retired high school college counselors, independent college counselors, retired high school teachers, retired high school principals, other student affairs and outreach officers on campus (perhaps working on partial released time from their regular job), and graduate students, usually in Education, but sometimes in other fields as well. On occasion a faculty member has stepped forward to serve as a reader, but the time commitment required would likely be prohibitive except for emeritus faculty members. !Simple arithmetic (based on the number of applications) indicated that in 1998 slightly over 50 readers were required, while in 2002 nearly 80 were required. The mix of readers has remained about half career professionals and half temporary readers. The career staff in OUA has more than enough duties to occupy them full-time for the remainder of the year. Reading assignments are arranged so that each file receives at least one of its reads by a career staff person in OUA. No reader is allowed to evaluate and score the file of an applicant whom they know or have worked with in any capacity.
All readers, even those who have read files for 15 years, are required to undergo approximately 60 hours of training each year. First they are required to read and study an extensive reader training manual, and attend 12 hours of training sessions where the Reader Training Manual is discussed, questions answered and many points in it expanded upon and explained. The Chair of AEPE makes a presentation at these training sessions and responds to questions. Then all readers are required to read a set of approximately 80 files from the previous years' cycle that have been carefully selected to include samples of nearly every type of file. These files have been analyzed in advance by a small group of experienced lead readers, the management team, and members of AEPE. The appropriate score for each file is agreed upon together with the rationale for this score. The AEPE members who participate in these meeting play a key role in setting the scores for these files and in interpreting the guidelines and AEPE policy statements. After the readers study these files and score them on their own, they are required to attend eight three-hour norming sessions where these files are discussed and analyzed in an interactive mode. The discussion, which is often quite lively, is structured so that all readers come to accept the score that has been established and the rationale for it. Many readers have to adjust their scoring during this process and gradually hone their skills. AEPE members also participate in these training session and contribute to the discussion.
During the eight week reading period for freshman applications, all readers are required to attend weekly norming exercises, which have the same format as the training sessions. These sessions !concentrate on analyzing difficult and complex cases selected and scored by the lead readers and AEPE members from among applications in the current cycle. The readers are divided into teams with an experienced lead reader overseeing each team. Statistics on each reader are prepared weekly so that readers whose !distribution of scores departs from the recommended distribution can be readily identified and corrective action taken by the team leaders. Also readers who produce an abnormally large number of third reads are identified and are provided help by the team leaders. The success of this training and supervision is evident from the third read rates. In 1998, less than 6% of the files had to go to a third read to resolve discrepant scores. This fell to under 3% by 2001, and in 2002 with the unitary scoring process, it fell to 1.3%.
The reading of advanced standing applicants begins in early March shortly after the production reading of the freshman applicants has been completed and continues on into April. Advanced standing reader training has to begin earlier. As already noted, the reading of advanced standing applicants will expand substantially in the 2003 cycle.
The demographic outcomes of the process have to be judged in the context of the applicant pool. The percentage of underrepresented minority students among the freshman applicant pool to Berkeley (excluding international applicants) had grown steadily from 1980 until 1995 when it reached 19.1% of the domestic applicants. Beginning in 1996, the percentage fell sharply, bottoming out at 14.0% in 1999. This drop can presumably be attributed to the passage of SP-1 and Proposition 209 although the drop began two years before either became effective in 1998. The percentage has rebounded since 1999, reaching 17.4% in 2002. Up through 1997 when race and ethnicity could be used as criteria along with others for selection, the percentage of underrepresented minorities among the admits exceeded the percentage among the applicant pool (e.g. 26.5% admits versus 19.1% applicants in 1995, 24.0% admits versus 17.7% applicants in 1996, and 23.0% admits versus 16.2% applicants !in 1997).
In 1998, when SP-1 and Proposition 209 took effect, the percentage of underrepresented minorities among the admits dropped sharply to 11.2% as compared to 16.1% among the applicant pool. In the four years subsequent to 1998, the percentages of underrepresented students among the admits have been slightly less than the percentage among the applicants -- 13.5% vs. 14.0% in 1999, 15.3% vs. 15.7% in 2000, 16.4% vs. 16.6% in 2001, and 16.5% vs. 17.4% in 2002.) The gradual increase in the percentage of underrepresented minorities over these four years has apparently been largely the natural consequence of the increase of their percentage in the applicant pool. What this has meant is that in the last four years, underrepresented minority applicants have been admitted at close to the same rate as all applicants. These data represent an average over the different underrepresented groups, but when the groups are desegregated, the admission rates are different.
The average test scores and average high school GPA for underrepresented minority applicants are less than the averages for all applicants -- a pattern that has been true for many years. If the campus were to admit students just on the basis of these numerical indicia, say using the old AIS, there would be many fewer underrepresented minorities admitted than are currently admitted, and the average test scores and grades for underrepresented minorities would be less than the averages for all students admitted. But using just these data for the admissions decision would be basing admission decisions on inappropriately constricted and truncated vision of the student and his or her accomplishments. Such a process would not look at the rigor and depth of the curriculum undertaken, nor would the applicant be viewed in the context of what opportunities were available, and nor would the extent to which the student challenged themselves and took advantage of the opportunities available in the educational context of the school be considered. Such a process would not take account of a student's achievement and intellectual growth in outreach programs, nor would it take into account the full extent of the supplemental information that might be available especially if the applicant has been referred to Augmented Review. Further it would not take account of achievements in extracurricular activities, or indications of determination, creativity, or intellectual independence. Finally it would not take account of economic or social hardship, the necessity to work to help support the family, the need to care for younger siblings in the home, often a single parent home, and or the amount of social capital that the family has and can convey to the student.
These considerations do not amount to some kind of misery index, but attempt to gauge how and with what maturity and determination the student dealt with and overcame obstacles and achieved their goals.
Taking account of this wide variety of factors, many of them non-cognitive and some difficult or impossible to quantify, ends up having the effect of counterbalancing in the actual admissions process much of the impact of the group difference in the average grades and test scores. The factors are of course applied in a race blind manner. Applicants are evaluated on a broad and multi-faceted conception of merit and the process seeks to identify students who have shown the ability to succeed at Berkeley. The academic indicators for the admitted class have shown a steady rise since introduction of comprehensive review (with only a small dip in 2001 but with a recovery in 2002) !as is indicated in the attached tables. The average freshman GPA at Berkeley has also risen each year. Data covering several years are included in Appendix E. Additional studies of the performance of the students admitted under comprehensive review are underway and will continue in the future. Cumulative GPA, GPA in upper division courses, selection of majors, and graduation rates will be analyzed as the data become available.
Advanced standing students who enter are highly qualified; the average GPA in their lower-division transferable work is about 3.67, and these students do very well once here. Their UC GPA in upper-division work is about 3.25, only 0.08 less than the GPA in upper-division work of the students who entered as freshmen. Well over 90% of them graduate within four years. In 2002, 19.0% of the advanced standing applicants were underrepresented minority student, and 17.3% of the admits were underrepresented minority students. In 2001, the corresponding numbers were 17.5% and 16.1%.
Comprehensive review, which has now been in place for five years, has been a success. High school counselors tell OUA that our process is making better decisions from their perspective. From reading a sampling of files, it is evident that the new review process is admitting many talented and outstanding applicants that the faculty would want to have on the campus, and who would have been missed by the previous review process. Traditional academic indicators are up, and for the last four years, the admit rate for underrepresented minorities has been nearly equal to the overall admit rate for all applicants. Thus the group of students admitted does generally encompass the diversity of the applicant pool and also of the pool of UC eligible high school graduate. That the applicant pool and the pool of UC eligible high school graduates do not yet encompass the diversity of California high school graduates is a pressing and serious societal problem facing the State and the University.!
Comprehensive review based on a reading and evaluation of the file by professional staff is inherently less transparent to the various publics of the campus than a formula based process with well-defined cutoffs. Although readers are making subjective, human judgements in their scoring, these scores have been demonstrated to be highly reliable. Two trained professional readers score each file independently and when scores are discrepant by a significant amount, an experienced third reader resolves the discrepancy. The percentage of files requiring a third read in 2002 was a remarkably low 1.3%. As a public university, UC Berkeley has a unique obligation, which is not fully shared by private universities, to articulate and explain its admission process widely. This current report is one more such attempt, of many, (see Appendix I) to explain the process of comprehensive review to our faculty colleagues, to the Regents, to students and parents, and to the general public.
(Appendices omitted)