Senate-Administration Workgroup on Admissions Final Report, November 6, 2025
Executive summary
Over the past five years, UC San Diego has experienced a steep decline in the academic preparation of its entering first-year students -- particularly in mathematics, but also in writing and language skills. Between 2020 and 2025, the number of students whose math skills fall below middle-school level increased nearly thirtyfold, reaching roughly one in eight members of the entering cohort. This deterioration coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic and its effects on education, the elimination of standardized testing, grade inflation, and the expansion of admissions from under-resourced high schools. The combination of these factors has produced an incoming class increasingly unprepared for the quantitative and analytical rigor expected at UC San Diego.
The Senate–Administration Working Group on Admissions (SAWG) concludes that this trend poses serious challenges both to student success and to the university’s instructional mission. Admitting large numbers of underprepared students risks harming those students and straining limited instructional resources. The report offers a series of recommendations to improve the alignment between admissions practices, student readiness, and available support systems.
Key Recommendations
1. Addressing the Math Preparation Crisis
● Develop and implement a Math Index to predict students’ likelihood of placement into remedial math, using historical placement data and transcript-based variables (coursework, grades, high school attended).
● Use the Math Index in matching students with majors to ensure that the number of students requiring Math 2/3B remains within manageable limits, with an initial target of no more than 300 first-year students in these courses by 2026–27.
● Reassess math requirements by major, ensuring that degree pathways align with actual quantitative demands and that applicants are clearly informed of differences between B.A. and B.S. programs.
● Require early summer math placement testing (by June 1) for all incoming students needing math for their major, to enable timely remediation before fall enrollment.
● Bring admissions levels from under-resourced (LCFF+) into alignment with those of similarly selective UC campuses while maintaining equity and access goals.
● Establish feedback mechanisms with high schools -- especially those with persistent mismatches between student grades and placement results -- to address curriculum quality and grade inflation.
2. Improving Writing and Literacy Assessment
● Commission a dedicated campus study on writing and literacy preparedness, engaging humanities and writing program faculty, library experts, and specialists in communication across disciplines.
● Develop or adopt a more predictive assessment of writing and language skills to be used in admissions, moving beyond GPA and course titles to evaluate readiness for college-level work.
3. Strengthening the Holistic Review and Selection Process
● Integrate the Math Index and improved literacy indicators into holistic review for majors requiring high analytical or quantitative skills.
● Enhance cross-unit communication between academic departments, Enrollment Management, and the Committee on Admissions (CoA), ensuring faculty input earlier in the admissions cycle and feedback after each cycle.
4. Clarifying the Role of Portfolios in Arts Admissions
● Improve transparency by ensuring feedback loops between Admissions, the Dean’s Office, and departments, so that faculty reviewers receive information about outcomes for applicants they evaluated.
5. Reaffirming Faculty Oversight through the Committee on Admissions. The Committee on Admissions should assume a proactive leadership role in shaping and evaluating admissions policies. Specifically, CoA should:
● Oversee the implementation and annual recalibration of the Math Index.
● Collaborate with Enrollment Management to evaluate correlations between Holistic Review scores, placement results, and student outcomes.
6. Systemwide Recommendations
● UC San Diego’s representative on BOARS should advocate for a systemwide reexamination of standardized testing, as many peer institutions have already done.
● BOARS should also investigate disparities in high school grading standards and develop a UC-wide response to ensure fair and reliable admissions evaluation.
Full report at https://senate.ucsd.edu/media/740347/sawg-report-on-admissions-review-docs.pdf.
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NOTE: It seems unlikely that UC-San Diego is the only UC campus with this problem.
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