More Minorities to Attend Cal

After years of dismal minority enrollment at UC Berkeley, the state's flagship public university, the numbers are beginning to creep up. The Oakland Tribune reports that: Final enrollment numbers released Wednesday show that 426 Latino freshman attended University of California, Berkeley in the fall. That is up from 340 last year and is the most since 1997, the last year affirmative action was used and 469 Latino and Chicano freshman enrolled. In 1998, 271 Latino freshmen enrolled at UC Berkeley, according to UC data." The number of blacks rose as well from 108 last year to 135 this year. That's still down the fall 2003 when 149 black freshmen enrolled. Here's some of the rest of the more interesting numbers: UC Berkeley enrolled 4,101 freshman in fall 2005, up from 3,671 in fall 2004. Of this year's freshman class, only 575 students are from underrepresented minority groups. Forty-eight percent of the freshman class is Asian, and 31 percent is white, the numbers show. Campus officials said Asian students qualify for UC campuses at higher rates than do other ethnicities. Additionally, Asian students are more likely to accept UC Berkeley admission offers than other students — 49 percent compared with an overall acceptance rate of 43 percent.