Keywords: diversity, standardized tests, SAT, ACT, University of California, affirmative action, quotas, UCLA, UC Berkeley, SAT II

High school seniors applying to the University of California, which includes UC Berkeley and UCLA, may not have to take the SAT II subject tests or as many college preparatory courses to be accepted to one of the system's nine universities.

On Wednesday, University of California's Board of Regents discussed revising the system's admissions plan to deemphasize SAT test scores and allow individual campus-admissions offices greater latitude in how they choose their freshman classes. It is suspected that such a move would increase opportunities for admission for low-income students and students from traditionally underrepresented racial and ethnic groups.

UC faculty leaders proposed the new plan last month, arguing that the current eligibility formula disqualifies deserving students, especially those from low-income and traditionally underrepresented backgrounds.

Traditionally, the UC system promised admission to at least one of its campuses to applicants who were in the top 12.5 percent of California's high-school graduates. That ranking was determined by grades and test scores that, since the 1970s, have included the SAT II subject tests. The UC system is the only large public university that requires the SAT II tests for admission. Under the new faculty proposal, students close to meeting the grade-point average and course levels would be considered by each of the campuses individually, an exercise that would consider the applicants' personal backgrounds, reports the Fresno Bee.

The faculty plan claims it will open doors to promising high-school students who lacked access to the information or classes they needed to be put on the UC path early.

While the faculty proposal would get rid of the SAT II requirement, applicants would still have to take the general SAT test that covers math, writing and verbal reasoning or the comparable ACTs, reports the Fresno Bee.

The faculty committee's chairman, Mark M. Rashid, a professor of engineering at the University of California, Davis said approximately 2,000 high-school graduates per year with grade-point averages above 3.5 are not typically considered for admission because they do not meet basic requirements, like taking the right college-preparatory courses or the SAT II. That group of students typically comes from low-income households and households of underrepresented groups, he said.

"These are students that the University of California should be bending over backwards to be fair to, and yet we're just summarily declining them for these trifling bureaucratic reasons," Rashid told The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Click here to read the entire story in the Fresno Bee.