LOS ANGELES — The University of California, aiming to widen admission access for disadvantaged students, will give a second chance to thousands of rejected California high school applicants who had a qualifying 3.0 grade point average but failed to complete the required series of 15 college preparation courses.
But there's a catch to receiving a guaranteed spot at the highly competitive universities: Students must first successfully complete their missing lower division and general education courses at a community college and earn the program's required grades.
The proposed pilot program, presented Wednesday at the Board of Regents meeting in San Diego, is aimed at about 3,700 of the 10,000 California first-year UC applicants who did not meet the system's first-year admission requirements — about half of whom were low-income, underrepresented students of color or the first in their families to attend college.
