Bruin applicant No. 1 had an A-minus average at a good high school. His transcript showed numerous honors and accelerated classes, and his SAT score was 2040 of 2400. He was an athlete and clearly engaged at his high school and his church.
In his essays, he wrote movingly about his family and its influence on his life and choices.
But did he have what it took to become a UCLA freshman?
A group of admissions readers was asked to answer that question in December, when it met to be trained for a difficult task: choosing about 11,800 students for admission to the fall freshman class from the nearly 51,000 who applied.