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The UCLA admissions process, though moving in the right direction, still has its shortcomings. Despite the Academic Senate’s stated desire to broaden the criteria for admissions beyond academic achievements, the new holistic approach allows for little meaningful evaluation of an applicant’s “life challenges” because it is too subjective.

The final enrollment figures were released Tuesday for the fall incoming class. After the approved appealed cases, final figures indicated that a few more black students were admitted than originally reported.

Administrators like Janina Montero, vice chancellor of UCLA Student Affairs, have said that if it were not for Proposition 209, UCLA would currently be practicing affirmative action. Any plan that includes race as a factor in admissions decisions is a bad contingency plan.

Proposition 209 was passed by California voters in 1996 and banned race-based affirmative action in the University of California system.

It’s actually a smart idea to bring back affirmative action – but not the kind you’re probably thinking about. The days of race quotas are long behind us (and that’s certainly for the better), but there is another idea worth considering: affirmative action based on socioeconomic status.

Race-based affirmative action is a problem because there are a considerable number of minorities in the world that are neither poor nor disadvantaged. Giving a rich black student (ostensibly able to afford a private school education and SAT prep courses) priority over a poor and genuinely disadvantaged white student is wrong.

What if UCLA gave preferential treatment to students from low socioeconomic backgrounds (say below the poverty line)? The goal is still the same – to give disadvantaged people a boost in college admissions – except this system would leave no room for messy questions about race.

Obviously this is not a final solution. The stars would have to align and the U.S. would have to be able to solve not only inequalities in the K-12 education system, but also poverty itself, in order for affirmative action not to be necessary.

The current process doesn’t properly define “life challenge” – a category of the application now given considerably more weight – which makes the term too subjective.

Applicants should be judged on academic qualifications and on what they have been able to achieve within the context of what is realistic based on the applicant’s background.

A student with middle class or wealthy parents should be expected to have higher test scores and a better education than a student who is raised in a poor neighborhood and given an education in an under-performing school.

Applicants should not be evaluated on touchy-feely “challenges” but on actual, provable disadvantages based on characteristics such as family income and which high school they attended.

There will always be inequalities in society, and addressing those inequalities where they actually exist is a step in the right direction for UCLA.

As for the current process of holistic admissions, the administration has a long way to go.