When I meet Li Wei at my freshman orientation at UCSD, I was instantly struck by his jubilant nature. With a pleasant countenance and pillowy belly that pudged out just from under his star wars shirt, he looked like the Pillsbury doughboy had grown up and gotten into Sci-fi. Yet in spite of his exterior, Wei was quite the intellectual powerhouse.
When I meet Li Wei at my freshman orientation at UCSD, I was instantly struck by his jubilant nature. With a pleasant countenance and pillowy belly that pudged out just from under his star wars shirt, he looked like the Pillsbury doughboy had grown up and gotten into Sci-fi. Yet in spite of his exterior, Wei was quite the intellectual powerhouse.
As an international business major, he had already accumulated hours of experience as an intern for many successful Chinese businessmen and was now seeking to gain a complex comprehension of statistic and global politics. Instantly we threw ourselves into discussions of culture, education, and most importantly, House of Cards. Amidst all our analysis of the characters and weaving plotlines, we noticed how greatly our understanding of societal norms and political systems differed quite clearly from our differences in cultural perspective. Yet neither of us minded much, as we were both able to rejoice in our mutual interests, and grow intellectually from this exposure to alternate ways of thinking.
As a student at UCSD, I highly value these types of interactions and the overall presence of international and out-of-state students as they diversify the pool of thought on campus and provide opportunities for California students to gain further cultural competence. However, as someone who has gone through the application process myself and with peers, I believe the current admissions process at UCSD ignores the higher education needs of San Diego and California residents by continually accepting greater numbers of non-resident applicants. This disparity in admissions rates is clearly illustrated by UCSD’s student demographic information that shows a 1307 percent increase in international students in the last decade (2005-2015), and by 160 percent for out-of-state students. In my freshmen class, in particular, one in three of the students were from somewhere outside of California or outside of the U.S. A startlingly statistic considering how many of my friends and fellow classmates from West Hills High School were rejected despite their intellectual capacities and academic preparedness.
This neglect of California and San Diego’s educational needs is personally unnerving. I worry that the admissions trends for UCSD and other UC schools will limit the academic prospects for local students in favor of increasing revenue and global standing. While I understand a relative need for repair, research and campus expansion funding, I still do not consider this to be a priority over the education of California residents. In fact, the primary purpose in the establishment of the University of California schools was to provide California’s high school graduates access to institutions of higher learning. Evenso, the UC system routinely undermines its founding mission in order to maintain prestige and compete in the corporate college system.
However, with strong political opposition by the California Government (including a state audit of the UC admissions process in early 2016) the issue of increasing non-resident enrollment is being addressed on a large scale by the media and the general public. Although non-resident admissions restrictions/regulations would ultimately mean some loss of intellectual diversity and global exposure, I believe it is necessary to make this change so that hardworking and academically gifted students coming from California will be given a greater opportunity to attend UC schools. In the meantime, myself and other students will try to gain the most from UCSD’s academic community, and with intellectual and conversational gems like Wei the inherent flaws in UCSD’s admission system can sometimes feel easier to ignore.
See UCSD statistics here:
www.studentresearch.ucsd.edu/_files/stats-data/admissions/freshmen/ffhome.pdf
Further Info regarding the 2016 State Audit:
www.kpbs.org/news/2016/apr/04/uc-san-diego-saw-sharpest-increase-out-state-stude/#
