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Cheating: An Insider’s Report on the Use of Race in Admissions at UCLA
As the Ricochet editors have been kind enough to note, my new book — the title of which is the headline of this post — was released earlier this week. In it, I describe some of the things I witnessed as a member of UCLA’s faculty oversight committee on admissions — and I also blow the whistle on some illegal activity. Specifically, the fact that UCLA, in violation of California’s Proposition 209, is granting racial preferences to African-Americans and discriminating against Asians.
On Wednesday, Larry Elder devoted two segments of his radio show to the book and an interview with me. Larry wrote the forward for the book and also discussed it in his most recent column:
… [P]erhaps more interesting than the data and statistical analyses is Groseclose’s documentation of the suspicious ways that UCLA faculty and senior officials reacted when he asked for the data. They seemed to know that UCLA was breaking the law, and they resorted to desperate measures to prevent Groseclose and others from seeing the proof. Once Groseclose began to press them, he says, their responses became more and more fanciful. For instance, they claimed that “privacy” was the reason they couldn’t give him the data. But then Groseclose suggested that they redact all names and personal identifiers from the applications. They still refused. Further, if they were so concerned with privacy, why did they give the data to the “independent researcher”?
They never gave Groseclose a plausible answer.
As you may have seen in the editors’ post yesterday, I also appeared on Fox & Friends to discuss the book.
On Thursday, I was a little nervous about the reaction I might receive at UCLA. However, as far as I can tell, no one at UCLA (apart from a few good friends) is even aware of the book. On Thursday afternoon, I taught my undergraduate class. It has approximately 70 students. The atmosphere of the class is informal, and I know each student by name. Yet no one mentioned either interview.
I suspect one reason is that few college kids are awake at 4:45am (when my Fox & Friends segment aired). But it probably also has to do with the fact that there are very few people at UCLA who listen to conservative talk radio or watch Fox News. At least so far, the reaction to my book at UCLA has been nothing but silence.
Stay tuned. I hope to post further descriptions of the book and updates of its impact at Ricochet.
Published in General
You know what? Tim Groseclose has guts.
(On top of which he’s one of the nicest guys I’ve ever met.)
One of the fine young people I employ was just accepted at UCLA after many years of hard work, an impressive GPA, and excellent test results and references. He is neither Asian or African-American so I choose not to share this article with him. I don’t want to rain on his parade!
In 2011 my youngest son applied to UCLA, Berkeley, UCSD and Davis. He only applied to CA schools because that’s what we can afford. His scores and grades were very high for all of these schools according to the online info we found, he’s an accomplished pianist and a school leader–but he’s a white male. He was rejected by all of them except UCSD, which wait listed him. He was devastated. I suspected that this sort of thing was going on. “Holistic evaluation” is just another way of instituting quotas and rejecting those who seem “privileged” (unless parents donate of course.) I was so angry I wrote a letter to the chancellor of the whole system and every regent. They immediately let him into UCSD off the wait list, probably because his Dad is a law professor and they feared a law suit.
I bought your book and am looking forward to reading it. It’s high time someone blew the whistle on this sort of thing.
I have serious concerns about using college essays as a big factor in admissions. It is impossible to know if the student really wrote it himself and there is no way to investigate the truth of the claims. My insurance agent’s daughter had a similar experience to my son’s. He told me that he wished he had encouraged her to claim in her essays that he had abused her in order to gain a “hardship” admittance. I told him that his daughter’s character is more important than admission to the best university in the world. Nevertheless, how tempting is it to exaggerate or invent hardships in order to get those extra “compassion” points that will get you admitted? No one is going to investigate the truth of your essay.
I think my son’s disadvantage was his essay. He wrote about how two factors greatly affected his intellectual development: his study of music and his educated family. We didn’t help him at all with his essay, but it was well-written, articulate and humble in acknowledging those who had helped him along the way. To the readers I’m sure it screamed “elite”.
I agree with Merina. The essay as a significant part of admissions is ridiculous. I’m already seeing the pressure here on two levels: first, my son’s jr. high (7/8th grades) is already hosting talks on how to prepare your resume for college; second, one of the nations’ most respected STEM high schools is in our county and there are constant conversations about the lack of diversity there (by that they mean not enough AA, Hispanic or Native American). The complaints typically center around the weight of the essay in the admissions process.
The part that horrifies me is that several friends of mine (all liberal) have wondered why I haven’t officially established my Cherokee heritage (I’m 1/8) so that my sons can say they are multi-racial on applications. They see it as a way to get ahead–yet, decry any attempt to remove this opportunity to game the system as depriving under-served minorities of their rights.
I think we have solved the mystery of the Anasazis and other lost civilizations: It was not drought or other climactic disasters that destroyed them, it was some good sounding but ultimately crazy idea that brought about their destruction.
This is the American version of Mao’s cultural revolution. Not only do we deny education to the most capable, but we indenture the less capable by providing only a specific and limited type of education. Of course it is dressed up in nice sounding terms, but ultimately — just as in the Old World — we are imposing a system predefined by birth and not personal accomplishment. We eschewed that in our Constitution; we are reimposing it in our politics.
Tim Groseclose, demonstrating the courage and intellectual freedom that the tenure system was designed to foster and protect, has done us a service.
@merina. Interesting comments. Just received notice that my nephew was accepted at UCLA and yes, his parents donated to their alma mater … USC.