The College Fix

Under ‘second-chance review policy,’ many Asian-American and white applicants denied admission to UC schools because of their race: complaint 

A nonpartisan group recently filed a lawsuit against the University of California system in federal court, alleging racial discrimination in admissions decisions.

One member of the group and former UCLA professor told The College Fix the school’s “second-chance review policy” is to blame. Meanwhile, a UC spokesperson said the school does not consider race in admissions and the lawsuit lacks merit.

The newly formed Students Against Racial Discrimination — which includes a mix of Republican, Democrat and independent students, parents, academics, and citizens — argues in its lawsuit that UC’s admissions process gives “discriminatory preferences to non-Asian racial minorities,” allowing “applicants with inferior academic credentials to obtain admission at the expense of rejected candidates with better academic credentials.”

As a result, many Asian-American and white applicants are denied admission to UC schools because of their race. This “also harms Hispanic and black students who are often placed at a significant academic disadvantage, and thus experience worse outcomes, because of the university’s use of racial preferences,” the lawsuit states.

The practice also breaches constitutional and civil rights laws, including the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment, Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and California’s Proposition 209, all of which ban discrimination based on race or sex, the lawsuit states.

The group is “asking a federal judge to enjoin the University from engaging in discrimination and appoint a monitor to review UC admissions activities for some period in the future” so all demographics can “benefit from a race-neutral University.”

Students Against Racial Discrimination member Tim Groseclose, a former UCLA professor who now teaches economics at George Mason University, said he has long been suspicious of UC schools’ admissions tactics, and is author of the 2014 book “Cheating: An Insider’s Report on the Use of Race in Admissions at UCLA.”

Groseclose told The College Fix that during the first year of a new admissions approach, the school introduced a “second-chance review policy,” which caused a dramatic rise in admitted black students, nearly doubling their numbers.

It was the second-chance review policy, not the new holistic system, in which an applicant is considered based on their entire profile, where the racial preferences occurred, he said.

More specific, the first-round reviews are handled by approximately 200 part-time staff members that UCLA hires during admissions season. These staffers are often guidance counselors from local high schools. They conduct the first-round reads and, for most students, make the final decision whether they are admitted or not. As I document in my book, these staffers practice little, if any, racial preferences. Related to this, the number of black and Latino admitted through first-round reads hardly changed – the number was approximately the same before and after the “holistic” system was implemented.

Meanwhile, about 20% of the applicants are granted a second-chance review. The latter reviews are conducted by the dozen or so senior admissions staff. You’ve got to understand that they are the ones who have the most contact with people like the UCLA deans and chancellors. Consequently, they are the ones, I believe, who receive the most pressure to admit minority students. Whatever the case, the data show that they are the ones who are granting the most racial preferences.

This is one of the best-kept secrets of the UC system: The increase in minority students was not caused by the holistic system. It was caused by the second-chance reviews.

UCLA law Professor Richard Sander, another member of Students Against Racial Discrimination, told The Fix the legal team has yet to deliver the lawsuit documents to UC, as the group plans “to file an updated complaint and serve it to the university.”

“We have received scores of communications from persons both inside and outside of the university with information relevant to our complaint, and we will be incorporating some of that information into our revised complaint,” Sander said.

“We will be asking, in discovery, for all of the data that the various UC components use in making decisions. If that data cannot explain the decisions made, without taking race directly into account, then the process is discriminatory,” he said.

However, UC spokesperson Omar Rodriguez told The Fix via email the school believes “this to be a meritless suit that seeks to distract” the school from its “mission to provide California students with a world class education.”

Since California banned the consideration of race in university admissions in 1996, UC has revised its admissions processes to comply with the law, Rodriguez said.

He also said “the UC undergraduate admissions application collects students’ race and ethnicity for statistical purposes only. This information is not shared with application reviewers and is not used for admission.”

“If served, we will vigorously defend our admission practices,” the spokesperson said.

MORE: Teen hired by Google was rejected by 16 colleges. Now he’s suing for discrimination.

IMAGE CAPTION AND CREDIT: UCLA / Pandora Pictures/ Shutterstock

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