While the number of African Americans and Latinos enrolled in the University of California precipitously dropped after the end of affirmative action programs, a new study suggests that such students continue to indicate strong interest in attending the university.

Researchers embarked on the study because they wanted to see if initiatives that ended the use of affirmative action in admissions had a chilling effect on under-represented minorities' desire to attend elite campuses, including UC Berkeley and UCLA.

The study suggests that just isn't so, said Alan Krueger, a Princeton University economics professor who co-authored the study with UC Berkeley professor David Card.

"What it says is that in spite of the lower admission rate and a lower chance of being admitted, they weren't discouraged from applying," Krueger said. "That's a positive finding. It would be very unfortunate if minority students didn't aspire to go to the top schools."

Krueger and Card based their findings on the fractions of SAT-test takers who sent their test results to top schools in California and Texas, both states that have ended the use of affirmative action in university enrollments.

The authors said there is a high correlation between where students send their scores and the likelihood the student will later apply to the school.

The study was released as the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday that universities may use race as a factor in admitting students. The ruling won't have any effect in California, where voters in 1996 approved an initiative banning the use of affirmative action.

The study showed that, even after race-based preferences were ended, highly qualified minority applicants continued to submit their SAT scores to the most selective institutions with the same frequency as in previous years. Highly qualified applicants were defined as those with A-minus or better grade-point averages or with SAT scores of 1,300 or higher.

From 1994 to 2001 the study showed virtually no change in the number of African-American and Latino students who sent their scores to the most selective public institutions. Forty-two percent of the highly qualified black students sent their scores to California's elite public universities during the seven-year period, and 50 percent of highly qualified Latino students sent their scores.

Despite the continuing interest, however, blacks and Latinos were admitted to Califor-nia and Texas universities at lower numbers after race-based preferences ended.

Before Proposition 209, blacks, Latinos and American Indians accounted for 23 percent of the incoming freshmen at UC Berkeley. But their numbers fell to 10.4 percent of incoming freshmen when the proposition took effect in 1998. Sixteen percent of the freshmen admitted to the campus next year are from under-represented minority groups.