Through my time grading mostly freshmen Stat papers at Berkeley, it's obvious the quality of students has gone down in recent years. Sure, it may be just because the subject was math and people just aren't good at it. My friend Nanette bugged me every chance she had because she was terrible at math but had to take a Stats class (congrats to her for getting an A-). But a new study from an UC regent and published in the Los Angeles Times claims Berkeley is actually letting in some pretty dumb people at the expense of some pretty smart people. Yes, the definition of smart and dumb in this case are SAT scores, something UC officials hate so much they forced the test makers to change the test. But SAT scores count for something; if it didn't, it wouldn't be used by so many colleges, right?

According to the statistics for 2002, Cal didn't let in any people with a SAT score of less than 600. But nearly 400 students out of 4,000 students with SAT's of 600-1000 were admitted, more than half of which accepted the offer. At the same time, 641 people were not admitted with SAT's of 1500 and above. The average score was 1337.

Since affirmative action was abolished from admission decisions, UC went to a comprehensive review to study each applicant and take in their entire application before making a decision. The assistant vice chancellor of admissions acknowledges most of the 400 admitted were underrepresented minority students from California's lowest-performing high schools and that they made the most of the opportunities that were available to them. Smarter people were rejected for having lower GPA's with a lower amount of honors classes than students comparable to them, but they still were at a higher level than those who got a lower SAT score and were accepted.

In this study, no race statistics were connected to the scores, so a breakdown by race can't be reached. Even the suggestion that minority students were let in over students with merit should make Ward Connerly mad, the African-American UC regent who wrote Proposition 54, which bans the collection of race data by state agencies with exceptions for extreme cases and federally funded programs.

No test should be the deciding factor of a person's admission to a university. But if someone scores a 600 or 700 on the SAT's, it should say something about the applicant and it better say something truly amazing about that person, not just that they were poor or underrepresented in society, because if it doesn't, they're just taking the space of someone more deserving.