The Redemption of UC Irvine

UC Irvine Rescinds 499 Offers of Admission

The redemption of UC Irvine is on track. You may remember a couple of weeks ago when we shamed the University of California, Irvine. And why? Because the university chose to rescind a whopping 499 offers of admission to the university this fall. If you’re wondering why a university would rescind 499 offers of admission, look no further than UC Irvine’s yield this admissions cycle. Many more students decided to matriculate than the university anticipated. So what did the school choose to do? It chose to more strictly enforce a deadline — that students needed to submit their final high school transcripts by a certain date or risk their offer of admission. Like California Assemblyman Phil Ting, we believe UC Irvine played a “gotcha game” so as to avoid over-enrollment. And that simply isn’t right.

UC Irvine Changes Course After PR Backlash

UC Irvine seems to recognize it did wrong by some of the students it chose to admit.

But UC Irvine, likely aware of how poorly this “gotcha game” portrayed the university, has already taken steps to make amends with the students whose offers of admission were rescinded. As Mike McPhate reports for “The New York Times” in a piece entitled “California Today: Outcry Over Admissions at University of California,” “U.C. Irvine initially defended the decision to cancel so many acceptance offers, then apologized after a drumbeat of news stories in which students said their lives had been upended. As of last week, roughly 280 of the students had been reinstated. Others were under review.” We are proud to have contributed to this drumbeat. To upend the lives of graduating high school students — and leave them with few, if any, choices for what to do next year simply because they missed a deadline to submit final transcripts — isn’t right. UC Irvine had these students phone numbers, email addresses, home addresses, school counselor contact information, and more. They could have picked up the phone and reminded these students. But, of course, they weren’t motivated to do so because they were facing over-enrollment.

The Redemption of UC Irvine

The University of California, Irvine has caused great damage to its reputation by initially choosing to rescind 499 offers of admission. We’re glad the school has reinstated approximately 280 of these admits thus far and here’s hoping the rest of the students whose offers of admission were rescinded are reinstated in short order.  We hope UCI chooses to do right by these students.

Do our readers think UC Irvine has now done enough or should the school do more — as a means toward redemption? Let us know your thoughts by posting a Comment below. We look forward to hearing from you.