Analyses of UCLA Admissions

Studies of the “holistic” admissions system at UCLA have been undertaken by three professors:

Tim Groseclose

is the Hoffenberg Chair of American Politics at UCLA and a Professor of Political Science.  He served on the UCLA Undergraduate Admissions Committee from 2005 until 2008.  In Groseclose’s view, UCLA undergraduate admissions was race-neutral in 2005-06, when he first examined the process at close range.  But he was concerned that the “holistic” admissions process was being adopted as a cover for illegal race discrimination, and in 2007 he requested data from the Admissions Office to evaluate whether race was being factored into decisions in an improper way.  When his request was denied, Groseclose resigned from the committee and prepared this report on his observations and experience.

Robert Mare

is Distinguished Professor of Sociology at UCLA and a former President of the Population Association of America.  After the resignation of Tim Groseclose, UCLA commissioned Professor Mare to undertake a detailed study of the holistic admissions system, and provided him with extensive resources and excellent data with which to do his research.   Mare’s report is intellectually honest but also worded in a very restrained and diplomatic way (it was, after all, an “official” report to the university, exhaustively reviewed and revised before being made public).  Mare was also not asked to draw any legal conclusions from the report (and, since he is a demographer rather than a lawyer, is not qualified to do so).  But the thrust of the Mare report is clear enough.  He finds that the main UCLA admissions process (called “regular review”) assigned holistic scores without regard to race, but that in “supplemental review” and “final review”, UCLA officials produced racial disparities in favor of blacks, and against Asians, that Mare could not explain in race-neutral terms.

Richard Sander

is Professor of Law at UCLA and the founding director of UCLA’s Empirical Research Group.  Sander submitted a public records request to UCLA in 2008, and obtained a significant public release of data on UCLA admissions in 2009, covering the 2002-03 through 2008-09 admissions cycles.  In analyzing the available data and studying the Mare report, Sander discussed both in his book, Mismatch, and in a supplemental report, clear evidence that UCLA’s admissions office engaged in illegal discrimination in its admissions cycles beginning in 2006.