UC SYSTEM SEES DROP IN BLACK APPLICANTS.

Byline: Sarah Lubman Knight-Ridder Tribune News Wire

In the wake of California's backlash against affirmative action, applications by black students to the elite University of California dropped by more than 8 percent this year, even as the overall number of freshman applicants reached a record high.

In releasing the application figures Tuesday, UC officials attributed the drop partly to impressions that the nine-campus university system is less accessible for underrepresented minorities. They cited both the Regents' 1995 decision to stop using race as a factor in admissions and voter approval of an anti-affirmative action ballot initiative last November. Proposition 209 is still tied up in court, but the Regents' decision takes effect for this fall's admissions regardless of the ballot measure's fate.

The most dramatic decline was among African-American applications at the University of California-Los Angeles, while the largest increase was among Asian students at the flagship Berkeley campus.

``The reports I'm hearing is that once you have debates regarding the whole issue of affirmative action, there are perceptions that are being created in the minds of individuals - rightly or wrongly - that UC will not be a welcoming institution to them as much as before,'' said Carla Ferri, director of undergraduate admissions for UC's nine-campus system.

Ferri stressed that her conclusions were tentative and based on second-hand reports from admissions officials at UC and other universities, both in and out of state.

UC President Richard Atkinson said in a statement that he was ``concerned'' about the decline in applications among minority students, and hoped stepped-up recruiting efforts would reverse the trend. For the past year, UC has been trying to hash out out a plan to increase the number of minority students without violating its new race-blind policy.

Last fall, only 1905 black students applied to UC's eight undergraduate campuses, down 8.2 percent from last year. Applications from Hispanic students dropped 3.7 percent over the same period.

Those declines are at odds with projected growth this year in both minority groups among California's public high-school graduates. The drops also occurred even as the total number of applications to UC reached a record high of more than 46,600.

UC has had a sharp drop in the number of black applicants before - 14 percent in 1989. But that drop mirrored a similar decline in the total number of black high-school seniors that year.

The system-wide statistics masked even sharper declines at UCLA and UC Santa Cruz. UCLA was hit particularly hard, with 13.3 percent fewer black students applying for admission in 1996 than they did a year earlier.

``It's horrendous,'' Rae Lee Siporin, UCLA's director of undergraduate admissions, said of the drop in black applicants. ``If this is the beginning of a trend, it's a devastating trend.''

UC Berkeley fared better, with 4.8 percent fewer black applicants last fall than the previous year.

Even as the ranks of Hispanic and black applicants shrank, those of Asian and white students increased far beyond their proportion of this year's high school seniors. Applications from Asian and white students rose by 5.9 percent and 2.1 percent respectively, but some campuses registered much higher increases.

At Berkeley, UC's most prestigious and competitive campus, applications from Asian students increased by 8.8 percent. Interestingly, applications from out-of-state students rose by almost 25 percent system-wide, although UC officials said they didn't know why.

High-school counselors around the state gave mixed accounts of the impact of UC's affirmative-action ban. At San Jose's Independence High School, the largest public high school in northern California, head counselor Barbara Taylor said there hadn't been any change in the number of underrepresented minorities applying to UC.

Other counselors said they'd heard some students grumbling about the effects of the Regents' decision, which will affect high-school seniors applying next November for admission to the 1998 freshman class. For a couple of weeks after last fall's election, it appeared that the passage of Proposition 209 would have forced UC officials to apply the new policy to this year's incoming freshmen. But UC has reverted to its original schedule while a legal battle rages over the ballot initiative.

``I've heard kids talking among themselves, saying things like, ``My (grade point average) will have to be higher now that there's no more affirmative action,'' said Mickie Spencer, who runs the career center at Fremont High School in Sunnyvale.