State Univs. (Houston, Dallas, Austin: 2015, school district, university)

[EDS_]

Sorry I made an error earlier. TAMU begins sending out acceptances in a couple of weeks.

[mSooner]

Tamu is big in repeat offenders

I think that is the best way I've ever heard anyone describe Aggies. Ever.

[loves2read]

Thanks

[EDS_]

Originally Posted by Big G

For UT, sure.

I think TAMU is more ambivalent about it.

On the one hand, they get stuck with some marginal Top 10%ers - although the completely clueless ones are at UT. The ones at TAMU at least had enough sense to realize they'd be over their heads at UT.

On the other hand, a lot of those "academic admits" at TAMU - the ones in the 11th -25th range - are the very students who would have gone to UT in a completely merit-based system.

I'd guess the overall effect is net positive for TAMU.

I can't even imagine sending one of my kids down there who was an auto-admit who also didn't competitively earn a slot outside of the warehouses of auto-admit kids in arts and sciences. UT says that for this fall 75% of its in-state allotment will be taken up buy top 8% auto-admits. Generally speaking the kids in the top half of that cadre are going to be fine and they are auto-admits but almost all them will get into one of their first one or two major selections. The other kids in that group get stuck - excepting the 2/3% who make heroic efforts and marks their freshman years and gain admittance into better majors.

Next year the quota moves to 7%. When it gets to 4 or 5% it'll be manageable for UT.

One of my daughter's friends could not get into either business, geology, engineering or IT nor was she an auto admit at UT. She was a outside the top 10% at Ursuline, really solid test scores (32 ACT IIRC). She ended up with a nice SCHOLARSHIP at one of the schools is listed above. What we are doing to UT is an absolute shame.

[BigDGeek]

Originally Posted by EDS_

What we are doing to UT is an absolute shame.

Speaking as a UT grad...I agree, but it's not "we". Put the blame where it belongs: The Lege. We have this asinine rule thanks to HB 588 which was a reaction to Hopwood v. Texas.

[TurtleCreek80]

Originally Posted by BigDGeek

Speaking as a UT grad...I agree, but it's not "we". Put the blame where it belongs: The Lege. We have this asinine rule thanks to HB 588 which was a reaction to Hopwood v. Texas.

Agreed.

You also have to wonder if UT has done any studies on the graduation rate (or even sophomore retention rate) of the auto admits vs the selective admissions group. Considering how many unqualified students I saw at the very beginning of the top 10% era, it can only have gotten worse with more awareness that student #4/50 at South Texas Valley HS or Gun Barrel City HS just has to sign up & show up.

We should be modeling our state schools off what the best ones (UVA, UNC, Michigan, Berkeley) do. I might be wrong, but I don't believe any of those do auto-admitting shenanigans, do they?!

[BigDGeek]

Originally Posted by TurtleCreek80

Agreed.

You also have to wonder if UT has done any studies on the graduation rate (or even sophomore retention rate) of the auto admits vs the selective admissions group. Considering how many unqualified students I saw at the very beginning of the top 10% era, it can only have gotten worse with more awareness that student #4/50 at South Texas Valley HS or Gun Barrel City HS just has to sign up & show up.

We should be modeling our state schools off what the best ones (UVA, UNC, Michigan, Berkeley) do. I might be wrong, but I don't believe any of those do auto-admitting shenanigans, do they?!

I don't think UT cares about its retention rate except for blacks and Hispanics. When I was a student at UT they did their level best to flunk you out freshman year. Their retention rate back then was abysmal and it's probably no better now. I was admitted to UT pre-HB 588 when UT had more of a reputation for being a lily-white elitist school. I didn't see it that way; almost every black student who applied was admitted and we still had less than 2,000 of them on a campus of almost 50,000 students. Even with racial preferences in place, UT was grossly overcrowded because it was still required to admit any student who met their published admissions criteria. Back then it was a combination of class rank and SAT score; the higher your class rank, the lower your SAT score could be.

Let's put the blame where it belongs, though: THE LEGE. There's so much that The Lege does to embarrass us; let's just add this one to the pile.

I agree that we need to take a long, hard look at higher education in this state. The more people move here, the more of their children they're going to try to pump through our system. The flagships are going to just get more and more competitive and out-of-state schools are going to poach the leftovers because our own systems are underfunded. Why the hell would a Texas kid who didn't get into A&M or UT go to UNT when they could get a scholarship to 'Bama or OU?

[Big G]

Playing devil's advocate:

The 10% rule is less about race, and more about $$$$, and about geographic distribution. The justification of the rule is that UT's student body should reflect the state as a whole.

If UT used nothing but grades and test scores, the kids would be largely middle-class and up, and largely from the Dallas, Houston, Austin, and SA suburban areas. There would be large chunks of the state that would not be served by UT. Specifically, the poor inner cities and the poor rural areas.

And that's why the Top 10% isn't going away. Those directly harmed by it (suburban kids) are concentrated in a handful of districts, while the direct benefit is spread thinly across a majority of districts. Now, UT itself also suffers harm from the rule. But, unfortunately, UT isn't ANYONE's constituent.

[matteo81]

I'd be fine with UT & A&M ending auto-admit, but it's hard to make the case for continuing to support them with the Permanent University Fund and other public funds if they become preserves for affluent students who went through the right school districts.

[BigDGeek]

Originally Posted by Big G

Playing devil's advocate:

The 10% rule is less about race, and more about $$$$, and about geographic distribution. The justification of the rule is that UT's student body should reflect the state as a whole.

If UT used nothing but grades and test scores, the kids would be largely middle-class and up, and largely from the Dallas, Houston, Austin, and SA suburban areas. There would be large chunks of the state that would not be served by UT. Specifically, the poor inner cities and the poor rural areas.

And that's why the Top 10% isn't going away. Those directly harmed by it (suburban kids) are concentrated in a handful of districts, while the direct benefit is spread thinly across a majority of districts. Now, UT itself also suffers harm from the rule. But, unfortunately, UT isn't ANYONE's constituent.

Affirmative action was a half-assed attempt to "level" the playing field, and I always felt it was too little too late...breadcrumbs thrown on the ground for the kids who managed to run the gauntlet of poverty and crappy inner-city schools and come out decent on the other side. It was insulting.

The top 10% rule is the same, just thinly disguised as something else. It's an embarrassment and to me all it does is highlight the utterly sorry state of public secondary education in this state.

YMMV.