Members of the UC Davis Academic Senate’s Representative Assembly voted unanimously Tuesday to approve new campus undergraduate admissions criteria developed by a senate committee.

The UC Davis standards, however, will only be adopted if the UC Academic Council and UC regents vote to approve new systemwide admissions criteria employing a philosophy of "comprehensive review."

The Academic Council was set to vote on the systemwide proposal Wednesday after Dateline went to press. If the council supports the plan, the regents will vote on it at their Nov. 14-15 meeting in San Francisco. If approved, the criteria could be used to admit students for next year’s freshmen classes.

The UC Davis Committee on Admissions and Enrollments standards are based on a UC-wide Board of Admissions and Enrollments proposal that the university system use "multiple measures of achievement and promise" to select all eligible students for admission.

Under that proposal all students eligible for UC admission will be subject to a comprehensive review process taking into account such factors as socioeconomic status, personal struggles and community involvement, as well as academics. Currently 50 to 75 percent of students systemwide are admitted to UC campuses solely on the basis of grades and test scores.

Linguistics professor Patrick Farrell, chair of the campus admissions committee, has said that comprehensive review is not expected to significantly change the profile of students admitted to UC Davis. With the new standards, UC Davis would use a system already in place for weighing academic and personal achievements. The difference is that all students’ full range of accomplishments would be scrutinized, with top academic students no longer excluded from that scrutiny.