Like all of the students whose studies it governs, the UBC Vancouver Senate found itself busy during the last exam period. At their meeting on Dec 16, Senate approved a new admissions policy, J-50 ^[1], which allows the Senate Admissions Committee to adjust the admissions averages of incoming high school students based on where they originate from.

In practice, all this policy does in the near term is add 2% to the entrance average of anyone coming from Alberta. However, the policy is written broadly that it would allow the Senate Admissions Committee to introduce these types of adjustments for any jurisdiction outside of BC/Yukon at any point in the future. Which, in reality, is only formalizing certain admissions practices that have been happening out of necessity for a long time.

This policy was originally brought to Senate at its November meeting pertaining only to students from Alberta, but was withdrawn to be re-written in a more general way to include everywhere outside of BC, and to better conform with a new way of writing Senate policies. (At the previous meeting in October, Senate, under the guidance of Science Associate Dean Paul Harrison, passed a new way of writing its own policies.)

So what is so special about Albertan students (besides the fact that the Senate vice-chair is one) that make them worthy of an extra little bump in their entrance average? First and foremost, the way their curriculum is structured is different than BC’s. In a nutshell, the committee that developed the policy outlined the motivation:

Comparison of Alberta and BC secondary school grading scales shows that a letter grade of ‘A’ is achieved in Alberta secondary schools at 80%, whereas in BC, an ‘A’ is achieved at 86%. The working group’s analysis of grade distribution, obtained via the BC Ministry of Education and the Government of Alberta Education websites, shows that roughly the same proportion of graduates fall within the ‘A’ band in both educational jurisdictions. For example, in 2003, 27.6% of Alberta students who took Math 30 (senior year mathematics) achieved an ‘A’ in the course (final grade between 80% and 100%); in BC, 27.1% of students in Principles of Math 12 achieved an ‘A’ (final grade between 86% and 100%). While approximately the same percentage of students achieve a letter grade of ‘A’ in Math in Alberta as in BC, Alberta students will present lower percentage grades in the course. Such similarities are also observed among other senior year courses presented by Alberta and BC students for admission to UBC. The working group’s findings indicated that by failing to consider the details of the indigenous grading scale, the University may be losing a number of strong applicants from Alberta.

Full Document: Report on Review of Admission Policies ^[2]

While it’s one thing to recognize that the curriculum differences exist and that it may be causing inequity in the admissions process, how best to institute a solution is another matter altogether. The committee gathered data from Alberta students and compared entrance averages to sessional averages after their first year at UBC. It was found that on average, Alberta students perform about as well in university as BC students whose entrance average is 1.5-2.0% higher than the Alberta students’. For better or worse, the analysis was done using high school average as a predictor of success at UBC.

Which brings us to the second special thing about Albertans: there are many of them at UBC. This type of analysis is only possible if there is a sample size large enough to make it meaningful. It’s likely that discrepancies also exist between other Canadian provincial high school curricula and that of BC, but it may not be possible to determine what kind of correction is necessary to bring more fairness to the admissions process if there are not enough students to examine. “The new policy is designed such that when we have such information and sufficient data for a given jurisdiction, this policy can be applied,” said Sonia Purewal, at-large student senator who sat on this particular working group. Senate tends to be a fairly cautious body, and likes to be fairly certain about what they are doing. Senator and math professor Richard Anstee, who chaired the working group, spoke at length about the extent and validity of the statistical analysis Senate undertook while formulating this policy. He remarked that not only did it remain fairly consistent over a number of years, it did not change much as the students progressed to their second, third and fourth years at UBC.

One of the things student senators hammered on during the meeting was wording around “educational jurisdiction.” Their chief concern was how this related to the potential consideration of individual schools as educational jurisdictions. The wording remained unchanged in the end, partly for bureaucratic reasons, and partly because nobody had any better way of wording things (protip: if you want to take issue with the way something is worded, make sure you have some sort of alternative to propose in its place). However, it did lead to some interesting discussion, especially around the issue of international admissions.

While the only substantive change in passing J-50 is its effect on Alberta students, the policy is already a big part of the foundation of international admissions and always has been out of necessity. Although no one can cite any previous Senate policy allowing adjustments to admissions averages for international students, simply the number of grading systems out there makes it a necessity. If you have an international student coming in with a transcript reading full of As and Bs, another student coming with percentages out of 100, and another boasting GPA figures, how can you most fairly evaluate these applicants? It’s less an adjustment issue in this case as it is one of translation. The policy allows for this, saying that in the absence of enough data to do a rigourous statistical analysis, grades can be adjusted (ie. translated) on a case-by-case basis by Undergraduate Admissions Office.

Policies like this one will only affect prospective students near the cutoff average; students with outstanding transcripts, regardless of where they come from, should not feel the effects of these various adjustments. Adjustments like those in J-50, along with the increasing use of broad-based admissions (using more criteria than simply grades to assess applicants), while developed with the noble goal of fair admissions in mind, are also making the process more time-consuming and opaque–two features which grade 12 students will not find desirable.