UC system to weed out fabricators

Deirdre Newman

Prospective students beware: the University of California system

will randomly start checking admission applications to make sure you

are telling the truth about your extracurricular activities and

personal statements.

Starting with applications for fall 2003, the UC system will

spot-check applications from throughout the state. The effort is

geared to maintain a high level of public trust and will be done

systemwide, even though two pilot programs found no evidence of any

lying, said Barbara Sawrey, chair of the Board of Admissions and

Relations with Schools.

While Sawrey justifies the effort as the “appropriate path to take

given the large number of applications we have,” UC Irvine BOARS

member James Givens said he does not believe it is justified.

“If the question is, are we going to miss a huge number of

students fabricating if we didn’t do it, I don’t think we really need

this to ferret out dishonest applicants, but to make the case that we

are guarding against falsified applications,” Givens said.

The UC system already verifies the academic information on

students’ applications, including transcripts, said Hanan Eisenman,

media coordinator for UC system admissions.

The idea to randomly spot-check applications came out of the first

analysis of the UC system’s policy of comprehensive review, which

began last year. Comprehensive review means that UC system officials

look at the entire file for every single applicant instead of just

relying on academic information to admit about 50% of freshmen. The

analysis will be presented to the UC Regents today.

The pilot spot-checking program -- conducted at UC San Diego and

the Office of the President -- found no evidence of lying, Sawrey

said. But the program will go systemwide to dispel the public

perception that dishonesty permeates student applications, Sawrey

said.

“There certainly have been reports in the media that have

questioned whether or not students are all reporting things honestly,

and we believe they are,” Sawrey said. “It would seem the small pilot

project is not enough to satisfy the naysayers, even though we found

nothing there.”

It will be up to the applicants to submit proof such as a

certificate of participation for clubs or a letter from a music

coach.

The number of files to be spot-checked has not been determined

yet, but they will be drawn from the central Office of the President,

Sawrey said.

Sawrey said she doesn’t know of any other schools in the country

that are using the random spot-checking process.

* DEIRDRE NEWMAN covers education. She may be reached at (949)

574-4221 or by e-mail at deirdre.newman@latimes.com.