The University of California (UC) system is channeling Aaliyah and telling rejected applicants, “Dust yourself off and try again.”

UC higher-ups recently unveiled a new plan to help improve admission access: giving select high schoolers who were rejected a second chance.

Specifically, the opportunity will be available beginning next year for rejected applicants who failed to take at least 15 college-prep courses (aka A-G courses), which are required for freshman admission, according to the UC website.

“The proposed pilot program, presented Wednesday at the Board of Regents meeting in San Diego, is aimed at about 3,700 of the 10,000 California first-year UC applicants who did not meet the system’s first-year admission requirements — about half of whom were low-income, underrepresented students of color or the first in their families to attend college,” the Los Angeles Times reports.

However, in order to qualify for UC admission, eligible second-time applicants will have to first complete the necessary coursework at a community college.

While the idea sounds almost identical to the process of transferring to a UC from a community college, the main difference is that “UC will make the conditional offer soon after admission decisions are released in the spring to incentivize students who are otherwise rejected from their campuses of choice,” according to the Los Angeles Times.

“This will convince so many more students to stay in school if they know that transferring into UC is actually a tangible reality,” Abeeha Hussain, a UCLA student who transferred from Palomar College, said, the Los Angeles Times reports. “It will give so much more access to low-income students and others and also enrich the UC with more representation.”

This sentiment was also shared by Regent Eloy Ortiz Oakley, the head of the College Futures Foundation and the ex-chancellor of California Community Colleges.

“Being able to grab them, give them the opportunity to get into the UC and give them a road map for how to succeed would send a huge positive message to low-income communities and communities of color in California that UC is serious about finding talent in all places,” Oakley said, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Similar to the UC system’s already-existing transfer admission guarantee (TAG), this proposed program would allow eligible students to earn an ensured spot at one of six UC campuses: Santa Barbara, Davis, Irvine, Merced, Riverside or Santa Cruz.

While students can still apply to attend the other, more popular UCs (Los Angeles, Berkeley and San Diego), they cannot earn a guaranteed spot.

What do you think about this second-chance initiative, and would you be here for other university systems following suit?