City College of San Francisco's Nursing Department has had an oversubscription of applications and an under-representation of minority students for a number of years. Although the department can only accommodate 96 students per year, over 600 subscribed in 1977. The purposes of this inquiry were to compare associate degree nursing program admissions criteria in California community colleges; determine relationships between these criteria and oversubscription of applicants and the under-representation of minorities; and to identify possible solutions to the problem. Questionnaire responses from 59 program chairpersons and the current nursing student body (196) from the college provided the data. The main conclusions were that oversubscription was a national phenomenon; diversified methods were employed in both testing and utilizing the results for acceptance; the majority of programs used objective admissions criteria; no one method avoided pressure from internal or external forces to the program; the majority of programs were aware of the problem; and ethnic minority students were consistently under-represented. Recommendations include: hire a full-time nursing counselor to advise and recruit minorities; require at least a 2.5 pre-nursing grade point average; eliminate interviews but require a pre-nursing course; and have students demonstrate bilingual proficiency. A literature review, bibliography, and the survey instruments are included. (Author/MB)