Deferred Students Get Second Chance at UC

State Sends UC $12 Million to Admit Slighted Applicants

By CATHERINE CHANG AND SONG-MY TRAN
The Daily Californian Contributing Writers
Thursday, July 29, 2004

State legislators struck an overdue budget deal late Monday, restoring $12 million to allow UC to grant admission to all 5,800 previously snubbed eligible applicants.

Facing a proposed cut of more than $300 million last spring, UC deferred eligible students to community colleges, guaranteeing them transfers to UC campuses after two years.

If a student accepted the Guaranteed Transfer Option from an initial campus, then that student can now expect an offer of freshman admission from that same campus, said Hanan Eisenman, spokesperson for the UC Office of the President.

For some UC officials and many state legislators, the restored funds will reinforce Californias Master Plan for Education, a plan drafted in 1960 that provides a blueprint for higher education in California.

These cuts were a denial of the Master Plan that promised if you were a qualified student you should be admitted, said Sen. Jack Scott, D-Pasadena, chair of the Senate Budget Subcommittee on Higher Education. Thus far, it has been fulfilled with the exception of this fall, and we made it very clear that to merely accept this was inappropriate.

Once state legislators vote on the finalized budget proposal, UC plans to notify students of their admissions through letters or e-mail, Eisenman said.

We have stamps on the envelopeswere ready to go, said UC President Robert Dynes.

Although students will have to make last-minute adjustments to come to UC, some officials said expanding access to the university is of the utmost importance.

Its better than not offering those students the opportunity at all, said Matt Kaczmarek, president of the UC Student Association in a teleconference. Thats their first prioritymore important than a lease or already having registered elsewhere, its the opportunity to attend the UC and thats what weve protected.

Eisenman said the university expects roughly 1,600 of the 5,800 deferred students to accept the new offer, only a few hundred more than the 1,357 who originally accepted the Guaranteed Transfer Option.

Even if more than the estimated number of students decide to take the university up on its offer, UC campuses will accommodate them all, Eisenman said.

UC Berkeley, however, can only accommodate students who initially accepted its Guaranteed Transfer Option and were planning on coming to the campus in two years.

We only have room for 270 students, said Janet Gilmore, UC Berkeley spokesperson. Students who were offered GTOs but didnt accept will still have a spot somewhere in a UC campus, even if its not Berkeley.

Students can expect fall, winter or spring admission, but UC Berkeley will not be able to admit students until the spring semester because of the falls early start date, Gilmore said.

Despite the eleventh-hour timing of the offers, many plan on jumping at the chance to attend UC campuses in the fall.

Tracy Lwi, who accepted the Guaranteed Transfer Option from UC Irvine last spring, was originally planning to enroll in Foothill Community College in August before hearing of the new offers.

Lwi said she plans to accept the new offer of admission, and is also back in the running for a scholarship for which she applied. She was disqualified from the scholarship earlier since she was not a UC-bound student.

Lwi, who attended top-ranked Gunn High School in Palo Alto, said she was surprised so many of her classmates got deferred from UC.

Half of the people at my school got deferred who should have gotten in, said Lwi, whose classmates were solid performers in school, and many of whom averaged 1,500 on the SAT. Almost everyone got at least one GTO.

In addition to funding for redirected students, the budget also sends $20 million back to UC to keep UC Merced on schedule to start instruction in fall 2005, said a spokesperson for Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez.

Another $29 million will go to fund UC outreach and academic preparation programs, which were virtually eliminated in the original January budget proposal.

Legislators will vote on the finalized budget today.