Proud to be a Bruin

I am attending the Winter State Meeting today at the James West Alumni Center at UCLA as a volunteer for the UCLA Alumni Association. This morning we had a great presentation from Gary Clark from the Office of Undergraduate Admissions and Relations with Schools. He shared some great information, some of which I think might be valuable to share with my high school juniors, and with my friends who have children who are starting to think about the college admissions process.

1. In 2012, approximately 72,000 students applied to UCLA for freshman admission. For this year, that number was just over 80,000 freshman applications, the highest number of applicants in UCLA history.
2. When taking into account transfer and graduate program applicants, UCLA has received just over 99,000 applications for admission.
3. The admissions process involves approximately 200 readers. They began their process in late November 2012, and are finishing their reading this week.
4. Every application is reviewed holistically by at least two readers, which means our admissions office performs at least 160,000 independent reads. If those two readers--independently reviewing each application--do not arrive at the same (or very similar) holistic score, that student's application is reviewed a third time by a senior member of the admissions team.
5. Mr. Clark made a great point when he said this: "If we wanted to, we could take GPAs and SAT scores and we could fill our freshman class with an Excel spreadsheet in an hour." We don't do this at UCLA. The UCLA admissions process is neither arbitrary nor strictly formulaic. Each of these 80,000 applications is given a careful review over a four-month process to select an outstanding UCLA Class of 2017.
6. Another quote from Mr. Clark: "We're not just looking for great freshmen; we're looking for great UCLA Alumni." In other words, our admissions process digs deep to look for students who will be successful at our university, and who are going to make us proud and who will serve the university and our local, state, and global community after graduation.
7. In the end, we face a heart-breaking reality: four out of every five applicants to UCLA will NOT be admitted. Most of these students who are not admitted are outstanding students, some the very highest performing in the senior classes of their respective high schools.
8. What makes the difference? How do you become of the 20% of applicants who are admitted? The students who are admitted all have strong GPAs (2012 weighted average was 4.37), SAT scores (2012 average score was 2,041), strong grades in challenging honors and AP classes (2012 average number of honors/AP classes taken was 21) but they also demonstrate one or more (often more) of the following qualities: leadership at their schools, involvement in the community, involvement in co-curricular and extra-curricular activities on a multi-year level, depth of thought, strong writing quality, individual responsibility, and a demonstration of service above self.

I volunteer for the UCLA Alumni Association because I love my university, but also because I want to maintain the value of my degree. A UCLA education maintains its value when we continue to produce graduates who embody not only strong academic performance, but even more importantly strength of character.