After months of revision and anticipation,
the University unveiled its new undergraduate admissions policy
last week. The College of Literature, Science and the Arts will now
be using its third admissions system in the past five years. This
new policy, however, is a marked improvement over both the grid
system, which was abandoned in 1998, and the point system, which
the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional last June in Gratz v.
Bollinger. While some flaws remain in the new policy, the revisions
will be a significant boon to the University and will increase the
rigor of the application process, maintain a high level of minority
enrollment in LSA and will make the application process more
personal. This is a policy that will both raise the caliber of the
student body in the coming years and make the application process
itself more meaningful for prospective students.

Unlike the previous policies, characterized by their reliance on
raw data documenting the applicants' high school performance, the
new LSA scheme allows for a more thorough evaluation of the skills
and talents that prospective students would bring to the
University. The extracurricular activities and talents that have
proved difficult to quantify in the past can now be fairly
incorporated into the final decision on a student's
application.

The most notable feature of this new
holistic approach is the increased emphasis on essays. Unlike the
point system, where an "outstanding" essay only resulted in one
additional point on a 150-point scale, the latest policy will place
a much higher value on applicants' analytical writing skills. With
this simple change, the LSA application will no longer be the
application that high school seniors rattle off in a thoughtless
flurry, while more demanding applications for other schools garner
the bulk of their attention and effort. The new system forces
students to mull over why they belong at the University and
contemplate what they can offer to the institution and their fellow
students. Complementing this attempt to treat applicants as
individuals, LSA has formalized teacher and college counselor
recommendation forms as part of the application.

With LSA now stressing essays as a central aspect of the
application process, the University has put forth a commendable
effort to more thoroughly select qualified students from the
applicant pool. The University plans to hire 21 new admissions
staffers to cope with the additional workload. The new hires are an
important financial commitment that illustrates the University's
dedication to ensuring a fair and thorough application review
process.

The benefits of this new focus on the individual are manifold.
First and foremost, it acknowledges that all applicants have the
potential to contribute to the intellectual vibrancy and diversity
on campus and allows these applicants the opportunity to
demonstrate this to admissions staff - unlike the old point system.
The essays will be specifically designed to provide a more complete
portrait of the qualifications each applicant would have to offer
to the University.

Unlike a rigid point system, essays give applicants with
different skills an opportunity to emphasize these attributes -
attributes not easy to detect on the old admissions forms.
Non-academic factors that have gone largely unnoticed in the past
can now be readily incorporated into admissions officers' final
decisions.

Even as LSA improves the application
process, it must also monitor the effects of the changes in order
to assure that minority enrollment does not decline. Racial
diversity is an important component of a rich educational
experience. The new system will allow the admissions officers to
take race into consideration in a less blunt and more sensitive
manner that will ease much of the discomfort observers have felt
regarding the point system. The Law School and many other
universities around the country have proven that it is possible to
maintain what the University refers to as a "critical mass" of
underrepresented minorities.

Another encouraging change that the University has made to the
application process is that admissions officers will take
socioeconomic factors into consideration more seriously than in the
past. Economically disadvantaged students often experience some of
the same challenges that underrepresented minorities face growing
up. The admissions staff is correct to take these challenges into
consideration. Furthermore, in order to create a truly diverse
student body that represents the full expanse of American society,
such policies are necessary.