Upward Bound

About six in 10 of the foreign-born undergrads are from Asian countries, led by China at 24 percent and Korea at 12 percent. But there are sizable percentages of students from the Philippines, Southeast Asia, India and Pakistan. Twenty-one percent of foreign-born Bruins are Caucasians, and Chicano and Latino students make up another 12 percent.

Robert Cox, manager for institutional research in the UCLA Office of Analysis and Information Management, says the numbers, similar to those at other UC campuses, suggest that educating immigrants and first-generation Americans has become "a central, even dominant, social function of undergraduate education in the University of California."

There are many different kinds of Bruins who can lay claim to the descriptor "first generation," and not all the differences are ethnic, racial or religious. Hans Johnson, research fellow at the San Francisco-based Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC), warns that when making policy and reviewing the results of its admission procedures, the university should not consider this group monolithic.

"In terms of education, there are two predominant types of immigrant groups: those that were very poorly educated in their home countries and those who were highly educated," he notes. "The challenge for the state moving forward, and ultimately for its universities, will be to educate the children of that first group. To simply say that these kids have done better than their parents will not be enough."

Still, says Cox, there's a lot more that unites UCLA students than divides them, no matter their origin. "The fact of the matter is, if they got into UCLA, they're smart, they're ambitious, and they're hard workers. They have more in common than we realize."

That's certainly true for UCLA undergrad Ginger McCartney, perhaps not the kind of first-generation student that fits the stereotype, but who nonetheless describes her hometown in the Coachella Valley as "a place you better plan to leave or you never will."As the youngest of three children with a father who "was into drugs" and a mother "who was into us," McCartney figured out early on that education was the only way she'd be able to change her destiny. So did her older sister, who attends Stanford.

"There are lots of kinds of diversity on campus, in my dorm, in my classes," says McCartney. "It's not just race and culture, but people have lots of different family and growing-up experiences that make them different and I can learn from," she says. "I don't know what you call that, but I like it."

Call it determination. Call it hope. By any name, it is the stuff that Bruins are made of.

Published Apr 1, 2007 8:00 AM