Report 2019-113 Recommendation 5 Responses

Report 2019-113: The University of California: Qualified Students Face an Inconsistent and Unfair Admissions System That Has Been Improperly Influenced by Relationships and Monetary Donations (Release Date: September 2020)

Recommendation #5 To: University of California

To ensure that the university maintains a fair and consistent admissions process, the Office of the President should require each campus to take the following actions:
- By March 2021, document and implement a selection methodology that describes how it will choose applicants for admission, particularly when the applicants have received similar ratings from application readers. Further, the selection strategy should specify the reasons why a campus may choose an applicant with a low or uncompetitive rating instead of an applicant with a higher rating.
- Develop and implement processes to use when selecting applicants for admission for identifying applicants whom it has selected for admission and who are not eligible for admission to the university, and record their rationale for admitting those applicants despite their ineligibility.

Annual Follow-Up Agency Response From September 2023

The admissions process includes two parts: comprehensive review and selection. Campuses use comprehensive review (or multiple measures of achievement in context) when reviewing applicants for admission. However, the scores generated through this process are not solely determinate in who gets selected for admission. Ultimately, selection decisions are made following the campus's enrollment management strategy, which combines enrollment goals for individual colleges, schools, programs, and/or majors. In addition, as admitted students choose to enroll or not, campuses must adjust their modeling to fill gaps in enrollment using waitlists. Thus, the scores of students admitted to a particular campus can vary depending on an applicant's proposed program/major, demand within specific schools, the depth of the applicant pool, as well as timing of admission. However, all selection decisions abide by the documented systemwide and campus policies.

California State Auditor's Assessment of Annual Follow-Up Status: Partially Implemented

The University has not demonstrated that its campuses have established specific methodologies for how they will choose applicants for admission. Until the campuses do so, they lack an important tool for ensuring accountability and fairness in admissions decisions.

Annual Follow-Up Agency Response From October 2022

The admissions process includes two parts: comprehensive review and selection. Campuses use comprehensive review (or multiple measures of achievement in context) when reviewing applicants for admission. However, the scores generated through this process are not solely determinate in who gets selected for admission. Ultimately, selection decisions are made following the campus's enrollment management strategy, which combines enrollment goals for individual colleges, schools, programs, and/or majors. In addition, as admitted students choose to enroll or not, campuses must adjust their modeling to fill gaps in enrollment using waitlists. Thus, the scores of students admitted to a particular campus can vary depending on an applicant's proposed program/major, demand within specific schools, the depth of the applicant pool, as well as timing of admission. However, all selection decisions abide by the documented systemwide and campus policies.

California State Auditor's Assessment of Annual Follow-Up Status: Partially Implemented

The University has not demonstrated that its campuses have established specific methodologies for how they will choose applicants for admission. Until the campuses do so, they lack an important tool for ensuring accountability and fairness in admissions decisions.

1-Year Agency Response

The University president required all campuses to implement this recommendation and to document the processes and procedures, via a letter sent in November 2020. All campuses have submitted documentation that outlines principles and methodology for choosing applicants, processes for accepting ineligible applicants, and processes for coding admissions by exception. The Office of the President has reviewed each campus's submissions to ensure the new processes and procedures will address the recommendation.

The University believes that the level of specificity provided by the campuses on their selection methodology is appropriate and to disclose the exact details of selection procedures at each campus runs counter to the principles of fairness and equitable access. UC believes greater specificity has the potential to advantage well-resourced families and those in the college consulting business intent on selling their services with claims of "insider" knowledge.

The University is already transparent about its admission selection procedures. The BOARS' Annual Report on Undergraduate Admissions Requirements and Comprehensive Review includes a summary description of campus selection processes in addition to what they have provided in response to the audit recommendation. The release of greater detail on how the university's criteria on comprehensive review are implemented at each campus, either in the generation of a holistic score (for campuses that use it) or in subsequent selection, will hand a significant advantage to those with the resources to take advantage of the information.

California State Auditor's Assessment of 1-Year Status: Pending

The Office of the President misrepresents our recommendation in its response by suggesting that implementing the recommendation would somehow make the details of its selection procedures public. As we describe in the text of the report, we found that both UCLA and UC Berkeley admitted students who, through the campuses' own holistic review processes, the campuses had determined were less qualified for admission than other applicants whom the campuses denied admission. Neither campus was able to explain those admission decisions. Documenting a methodology for selecting students for admission, including the circumstances when lower-rated students will be admitted in place of higher rated students, will lend greater accountability and fairness to the University's admission process, which is why we recommended that the Office of the President require each campus to do so. We did not recommend-and do not recommend-that the campuses make those methodologies public.

6-Month Agency Response

The University president has required all campuses to implement this recommendation and to document the processes and procedures, via a letter sent in November 2020. All campuses have submitted documentation that outlines principles and methodology for choosing applicants, processes for accepting ineligible applicants, and processes for coding admissions by exception. The Office of the President has reviewed each campus's submissions to ensure the new processes and procedures will address the recommendation. Seven out of nine campuses have successfully completed the requirements. There are gaps in criteria and clarity on some of the processes for the remaining two campuses. UCOP has requested additional documentation.

California State Auditor's Assessment of 6-Month Status: Pending

The Office of the President acknowledges that the UC has not fully implemented this recommendation. However, we disagree with its characterization of the progress that the campuses have made in implementing the recommendation. For example, the Office of the President stated that all campuses had outlined principles and methodology for choosing applicants, but when we reviewed the campus documentation that the Office of the President provided to substantiate that statement, we found that several campuses had documented insufficient and vague descriptions of their processes for selecting applicants for admission. Campuses described general characteristics that they consider when evaluating applicants, but did not specifically articulate a priority order for how they would decide which applicants they would admit. Particularly lacking from some statements was a description of how the campus would decide between similarly rated students. Of particular concern was that San Diego's selection methodology was less specific than the methods we reviewed from that campus during our original audit. These vague policies and procedures do not correct the problematic ambiguity that we identified in the campuses' admission processes, and fail to provide needed transparency in admission decisions.

We will consider this recommendation to be fully implemented when the Office of the President provides documentation demonstrating that each campus has documented polices and procedures specifying their methodologies for making admissions decisions as we describe in the recommendation.

60-Day Agency Response

The University president has issued a letter to the campus chancellors to implement this recommendation immediately and provide documentation of follow-through no later than January 15, 2021.

California State Auditor's Assessment of 60-Day Status: Pending

The Office of the President provided the letter it sent to the campus chancellors. We will consider this recommendation fully implemented when the Office of the President adopts a formal requirement that campuses take these actions.

All Recommendations in 2019-113

Agency responses received are posted verbatim.