University of California OKs a 'Radical' Admissions Change

Feb. 8
2:52
http://www.usnews.com/blogs/paper-trail/2009/02/05/university-of-california-oks-a-radical-admissions-change.html

Recently, the University system of California just “Okayed” a new shift in their admissions process, in which less emphasis is, placed upon ETS general test scores. This means that less emphasis is going to placed on acceptances based upon SAT scores; admissions officers will be more concerned with personal qualities of applicants instead of performances on tests. Some have speculated that it was only a matter of time before this shift would happen because the UC system has been for a while losing faith in ETS’s tests abilities to gauge how successful students would be in college. In addition, the admissions committees are lowering the standards for which applications are to be reviewed which will allow for a larger pool of applicants to choose from, though admission is still never guaranteed.
Judging from all of the information presented in the article it was difficult to form an opinion about this issue. There has been a general trend across the Universities of America to choose students based on extracurricular and athletic pursuits instead of academic achievements, not to say that that ideal has completely gone down the drain, but there has been a trend towards that direction. I currently think that it should be of the highest priority for Universities to choose students based upon academic achievement rather than extracurricular achievement because the first and foremost goal of an institution of higher education should be to foster the mind and to focus less upon other pursuits, such as athletic titles.