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Notes -
Yes, the increase in 2021 seems to be a function of the increase in applicants; admission of black applicants admitted actually declined in 2021: It was 850/6587 (13 pct) in 2021 versus 733/4454 (16 pct) in 2020.
Well, an obvious hypothesis would be that the university encouraged them to do so. See the links in OP's post, where university reps explicitly talk about efforts to increase enrollment. But, regardless, I want to emphasize that my point is not that no chicanery is happening, but rather that the data presented is insufficient to conclude one way or the other. I taught high school in Oakland for many years and had a lot of students apply to Berkeley, and the Asian-American students (who were a majority of the students, or a large plurality) overwhelming applied to the colleges of engineering, or chemistry, etc. I assume that is true statewide. Yet, the pct of Asian-American students admitted in 2021 (6113/36827) is greater than the pct of black students, as was the case in 2020. Whites were 16% in 2020 and 14% in 2021, which is the same or higher than black applicants. From the campus-level data alone, it is hard to make a claim of racial preferences, but data at the college level might imply that (since college of application is a [very] rough proxy for quality of student.
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