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UCLA IS NO 1 AAU

he defeat of affirmative action in 1996 has produced a sharp rise in the percentage of Asians in the student bodies of top California campuses. Since 1992 when it pulled ahead of UC Berkeley, UCLA has been the top U.S. university in the size of its Asian population. In 1998 it comprised 38% of the undergraduate enrollment, outnumbering Whites at 37%, according to UCLA statistics. The figures for new freshmen in 1998 suggests the Asian percentage will keep rising.
     Students identifying themselves as Asians were 37% of the freshman class while 31% identified themselves as White, 10% as Hispanic and 4% as Black. Since affirmative action was killed at the beginning of 1997, there has been a sharp rise in the number of students declining to classify their ethnicity, from about 3.5% of the freshman class in 1996 to 12% in 1998. Allocating those proportionately to the various ethnic categories, the Asian percentage of the freshman class would become 41% and the White percentage, 35%.
     The largest campus on the prestigious UC system, with a total student body of 31,000, has seen a dramatic rise in the number of Asians since 1973 when Asians were only 10% of the undergraduate population and Whites were 71%.
     The applicant pool for the fall of 1999 suggests that Asians will continue growing as a share of the student body. Whereas the university saw a 9.2% increase in the overall number of applications from 1998, the increase was only 7.1% for African Americans, 3.6% for Hispanics and negligible for Native Americans. With a total of 35,113 freshman applicants, UCLA is arguably America's most popular university. It also enjoys the most private gifts and grants among the 9-campus University of California system, recording over $250 million for 1998.