More on Admissions

As the Regents prepare to discuss A-G admissions requirements, this summary of the requirements from the San Francisco Chronicle may be helpful:

....UC requires a more rigorous set of specific classes in history and science than the California State University system does to satisfy these requirements. UC also has slightly stricter rules than CSU, including fewer ways to fix course failures or omissions, and requiring more of those earlier poor grades to be submitted. UC also lets students submit more honors points.

...Two groups of Californians are automatically eligible for admission — though not necessarily to the UC campus of their choice:

• Students who score in the top 9% at their high school in UC-approved courses during junior and senior year.   
• Students who score in the top 12.5% of the state’s high school graduates.

...Most freshman applicants complete far more than the minimum of 15 A to G courses required to qualify for UC admission. Here is a look at the share of applicants admitted in 2025 compared with how many A to G classes they took: 

• 15 to 19: 5% of applicants. Admitted: 3%
• 20 to 24: 38% of applicants. Admitted: 27%
• At least 25: 58% of applicants. Admitted: 43%

...UC has not offered specifics about what changes, if any, could come from the [A-G] review. Among the possibilities are:

• Changes to the subject areas themselves.
• Changes to the number of required courses in each subject.
• Recommendations for going beyond the minimum requirements.

...The earliest the regents could consider any recommended changes would be in the second half of 2027. Even if they agreed to make changes, the new rules could take time to kick in...

Full story at https://www.sfchronicle.com/college-admissions/article/uc-a-g-requirements-review-22368092.php.

Straws in the Wind - Part 464

From the NY Times: Teresios Bundi once symbolized the strange, life-changing opportunities the internet provided. Hailing from a farming village in Kenya, Mr. Bundi moved to the capital, Nairobi, in 2011 to be the first in his family to attend university. There, a friend suggested he try a new online job: writing essays for cheating overseas college students... Mr. Bundi estimates he wrote more than 2,500 essays over the next 12 years, sometimes three a day. He balanced completing his public health degree with helping faraway students studying engineering, medicine and computer science to finish theirs. Some students gave him their school login information so he could keep up with their assignments.

...Then A.I arrived, and the good times ended. In 2022, OpenAI released ChatGPT. At colleges worldwide, students made a simple calculation that has become more pronounced today: Why pay a freelancer in Kenya when ChatGPT could do the job? Essay work began to thin. Rates fell, and assignments dwindled. Before long, the industry shrank to almost nothing. “I never would have expected A.I. could do this,” Mr. Bundi said...

Full story at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/05/technology/kenya-college-essays-ai.html.

Retract

From the Chronicle of Higher Education: The journal Psychological Science... retracted a 2002 research paper co-authored by Dan Ariely, the influential but increasingly scrutinized Duke University professor, after the blog Data Colada reported earlier this week that the study contains fabricated data. The paper, on which Ariely shared authorship with Klaus Wertenbroch, found that subjects responded better to externally imposed deadlines than self-imposed ones, and has been cited over 2,000 times on Google Scholar. The retraction is the latest in a series of scandals that have dogged Ariely. Earlier reporting by Data Colada led to the 2021 retraction of another study he had co-authored, and data sleuths have cast doubt on more of his past research...

...The three professors who run Data Colada detailed several points of evidence showing that the 2002 deadlines study contains doctored data. Many participants’ results in the dataset were identical, suggesting data points had been duplicated or faked. Results that should be highly correlated — for instance, participants who said they liked the task would be expected to also report finding it interesting — showed no signs of correlation.

...In 2021, Data Colada documented evidence of fraud in a 2012 study Ariely had co-authored that also failed to replicate. Another author on the study was Francesca Gino, whose tenure was revoked by Harvard Business School after the data sleuths found a pattern of data fraud across several of her studies.* ...Duke announced [in January] it was closing Ariely’s lab, alongside several other centers, a decision the university said was made the previous December...

Full story at https://www.chronicle.com/article/data-sleuths-found-evidence-of-fraud-in-another-dan-ariely-study-now-its-being-retracted.

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*The Harvard Crimson reports pre-trial maneuvering in the Gino case is ongoing as a December 7 trial date approaches:

https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2026/9/9/harvard-gino-trial-near/.

Repeat from Sept. 20, 2022: Background About Admissions as the Regents Discuss the Topic

A new podcast called Gatecrashers is being unveiled about college admissions. At this posting, there are so far episodes about the history of such admissions at Columbia, Princeton, and Dartmouth - with more to come.* From the Gatecrashers description:

What topic is more controversial, sensational, and endlessly captivating than college admissions? It’s a billion-dollar industry. It sends celebrities to jail. The Supreme Court is weighing in on who gets in and why. We might think we have read all there is to read on the issue, and heard all there is to hear. But if you want to understand everything that’s going on with college admissions today—not just the battles over diversity, but the very existence of college applications, the essays and interviews and standardized tests—you have to look at the first group that tried to diversify elite schools. You have to look at the Jews. Gatecrashers, an 8-part podcast series launching September thirteenth, twenty twenty-two, tells the story of how Jews fought for acceptance at elite schools, and how the Jewish experience in the Ivy League shaped American higher education, and shaped America at large.

The Columbia episode, edited to remove extraneous announcements, follows and can be heard - along with the description above - at the link below:

https://ia601402.us.archive.org/25/items/big-ten/columia%20admissions.mp3

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*The full set of the Gatecrashers podcasts can be heard at:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/gatecrashers/id1640617083.

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Originally at:

https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2022/09/admissions-history-you-didnt-know-about.html. 

25th Anniversary: September 11, 2001 - Part 3

The fallout from the Sept. 11th UCLA Law School event continues:

https://dailybruin.com/2026/09/12/julio-frenk-condemns-symposium-featuring-attorney-for-alleged-9-11-conspirator 

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https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2026-09-12/ucla-chancellor-law-school-9-11-event

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https://x.com/yudapearl/status/2098927762669215919

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https://newsroom.ucla.edu/chancellor-julio-frenk-comment-event-coverage-sept-10

Grad Housing

Apparently, despite federal cutbacks, UCLA expects to need more grad student housing. From the Daily Bruin:

UCLA will convert a newly acquired Sawtelle multifamily complex into graduate student housing over the next few months. UCLA purchased the building at 1775 Beloit Ave. in August for $8.5 million. The property is about three miles away from campus, and students will be able to move in in a few months, a UCLA Housing spokesperson said in an emailed statement.

The acquisition – along with other purchases on Wilshire Boulevard, Venice Boulevard and Berryman Avenue – are part of UCLA’s goal to expand housing for graduate students, the spokesperson said in the statement. The university is converting Weyburn Terrace – which previously only served graduate students – from graduate housing into undergraduate housing over the next three years starting this fall...

Full story at https://dailybruin.com/2026/09/06/ucla-expands-graduate-student-housing-with-8-5m-sawtelle-property-acquisition.

Straws in the Wind - Part 463

From the LA Times: The Trump administration is proposing a new rule that would strip private colleges and private grade schools of their tax-exempt status if they provide targeted help to students based on their race, a significant escalation in the White House’s campaign to eradicate diversity programs directed at Black, Latino and other minority students... The Treasury Department proposed the change... in a new regulation that, if made final, would take effect after May 2027. The rule is broadly aimed at ending any policies or programs that help students because of their race, and it specifically says such benefits in admissions, scholarships and facilities “would be incompatible” with the rule...

The proposed change would not only impose a tax bill on schools, but also could discourage donors who would lose the advantage of deducting the donation to lower their taxes. A public comment period is expected to last until early November. In California, the proposed changes would cover more than 85 nonprofit colleges and universities, among them Stanford and USC. The proposed rule also affects private K-12 schools — in all, more than 18,000 institutions nationwide. Public colleges, such as UCLA, and public school districts would not be affected, although Trump has separately threatened to pull their federal funding over race-based assistance...

Full story at https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2026-09-03/trump-tax-exempt-status-schools-race.