"She has a low GPA and SAT scores," one development official wrote on a request for a 1986 applicant. "Her father just sold Miller's Outpost--major donor prospect." The student was admitted ahead of more than 4,000 students with better grades and SAT scores. The student's father declined comment this week.
Aggressive Follow-Ups
Documents also show that development officers often graded the requests ranging from A to C before sending them to the admissions office for determination. A computer analysis of a sampling of the requests showed that those grades roughly corresponded to how much the requesting donor had given--and also how likely the admission would be.
In some instances, records show, development officers followed up aggressively to make sure their top requests were honored.
"Please, please, please, this one is very, very, very important to us," a development official pleaded in a 1994 communication, hoping to persuade the admissions office to reinstate admission for the stepdaughter of a former alumni association official. UCLA had withdrawn the student's offer because her high school grades had slipped.
"[Her father] has served long and hard for the alumni association. . . . Any chance this could be reviewed ASAP? I'll owe you one!" The offer was restored.
Those documents also showed, however, that some of the applicants recommended for special consideration were academically competitive even without help. In other cases, the back-channel access did no good.
In 1992, for example, Frank del Olmo, then-Times deputy editor of the editorial pages, wrote a letter on newspaper stationery to Young asking for "any help" that the chancellor could provide for the daughter of Janet Clayton, then an assistant editor, to be admitted to the elementary school.
Del Olmo, now assistant to the editor, said that Clayton asked for his assistance and that he referred to the editorial board in the letter because he hoped that "saying this is a person in a significant position at the L.A. Times would move [the matter] a little higher on [Young's] radar screen than the dozens of things he has to deal with on a given day."
The child was not admitted, and Clayton--now editor of the editorial pages--said she feels that the request was a mistake.
"If I had it to do over again, I would not," Clayton said. "The reason being is that it can be misconstrued as some sort of effort to link things that were never intended to be linked."
