More Black Students to Attend UCLA This Fall

CNS - About twice as many Black students plan to become freshmen at UCLA this fall compared to last year, when the university was criticized for not accepting enough African-American students, the school announced today.

More than 4,600 of the 11,924 students accepted by UCLA have indicated they intend to enroll. Overall, the percentage of under-represented students—Native Americans, Hispanics and African Americans—increased nearly three percentage points to 19.4 percent of the total number of incoming students, UCLA reported.

Of those, 203 are Black students, up from 103 students who said they planned to enroll in last year’s freshman class.

Ultimately, 100 Blacks enrolled at UCLA last fall, marking the lowest number of Black freshmen at the school since 1973.

Community groups criticized the university for the low percentage of Black students admitted last fall, and in response, UCLA adopted what it said is a more “holistic” approach to reviewing applications. UCLA accepted 392 Black freshmen this year, compared with 249 Black freshmen last year.

The majority of incoming students—1,854, or 41.2 percent of incoming freshman—will continue to be Asian Americans.

Whites will account for 32.9 percent of incoming freshmen and 14.6 percent will be Hispanic. Native Americans make up 0.3 percent, while five percent of the incoming students declined to state their ethnicity or race. Sixty-two students identified themselves as “other.”

“I’m very pleased that all of these students, who will be bringing with them the highest academic and leadership credentials, have chosen to come to UCLA,” said acting Chancellor Norman Abrams.

Admitted students have an overall grade-point average of 4.3, compared with 4.26 last year.

In all, UCLA admitted 11,924 prospective freshmen out of an applicant pool of 50,744, which is the most applicants of any university in the country, according to UCLA.

The school is the state’s largest, with about 37,000 undergraduate and graduate students. It plans to enroll about 4,700 freshmen this fall.

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