UC Irvine reinstates admission for 117 students denied entry for fall

University of California-Irvine officials say they've reinstated the admissions offers for 117 students who were part of a much larger group whose offers were rescinded in the past weeks because of missing documents or low grades.

And more reinstatements could be made by the end of the week, officials say.

The reinstatements came after outcry in response to a Los Angeles Times article that revealed the upheaval of 499 high school graduates who believed they’d be starting UC Irvine in the fall only to be told that their admission had been denied because they’d failed to meet a requirement. Many students said they’d done everything the university asked them to do.

Many of those students protested, saying it was the university’s mistake, not theirs.

“Our vice chancellor chancellor of student affairs Thomas Parham is very aware that the process needed some improvement regarding customer service and overall needs improvement,” said campus spokeswoman Pat Harriman.

Additional staff is reviewing the remaining 367 appeals filed by students to find out what went wrong in the process, she said, and if a lost transcript or a grade input mistake – for example – was behind the university’s decision to withdraw admission.

In a statement to campus administrators, UC Irvine’s associated students group asked administrators to take steps to correct the mistakes.

The group demanded that the head of enrollment services “officially acknowledges and apologizes for the inconveniences created by the admissions errors and immediately engages in efforts to avoid any similar circumstances in the future,” the statement said.

Harriman said administrators are reviewing how to better handle this issue and improve its customer service for next year’s admissions cycle.