Suggest what students can do to be in top 10% (Houston: credit, how much)

[Brom]

Since I did not take high school here, I decided to ask this since I live in Houston and some of y'all can help.

Obviously high grades specially if it's AP courses can get higher GPA.

One thing I'm not sure will getting more credit/courses than minimum required number of credits help?
My understanding all courses' score are averaged, so getting more courses doesn't really help with GPA/ getting higher class ranking (specially if you score there is just the same), am I correct?

[airdrawndagger]

Originally Posted by Brom

One thing I'm not sure will getting more credit/courses than minimum required number of credits help?
My understanding all courses' score are averaged, so getting more courses doesn't really help with GPA/ getting higher class ranking (specially if you score there is just the same), am I correct?

Depends on the school, but most are based on average GPA, with the number of courses having no bearing on class ranking.

Originally Posted by Brom

Obviously high grades specially if it's AP courses can get higher GPA.

This is key. If your child is not in AP classes, they have little chance of being top 10% - unless they are enrolled in a very uncompetitive high school. This is because ranking is based on weighted GPA, typically on a 5.0 scale.

[WRM20]

If your kid is in sports and has to take a PE class or similar to be in the sport, make those classes pass/fail, so they do not reduce the GPA earned by being in AP classes. That happened to a friend's son - the PE classes he had to take to be on the swim team dropped his GPA because they were 4.0 max classes. He ended up 2nd in the class instead of first.

Send your kid to a school that's not quite as competitive, like Waltrip or Heights. Not Lamar or Bellaire, assuming HISD

[Dopo]

The thing about being in 10% is complete BS
I sacrifice a lot to make sure my family lives in a safe place and now I find out that we would have been better off living in a poorer neighborhood where my kids would have a better chance of being in the top 10%.

AP classes help because they have more value,
But make sure your kid takes classes that he’s not going to be struggling in

I would recommend identifying early what field the kid would want to go into in college
This helps identify the classes that he/she will enjoy and is more likely to get good grades

[Texas Ag 93]

Originally Posted by Dopo

The thing about being in 10% is complete BS
I sacrifice a lot to make sure my family lives in a safe place and now I find out that we would have been better off living in a poorer neighborhood where my kids would have a better chance of being in the top 10%.

Yes, there have definitely been some unintended consequences to a program that was designed to help level the playing field for students at underperforming schools, poor school districts and/or rural districts. Without the 10% rule, many students at these schools would have no chance to get into UT or A&M, and public universities have an obligation to be open and available to all citizens across the state, hence the "cutoff" at 10%.

Unfortunately, the issues that commonly happen include:

1. Top 10% students at poorly performing schools are often woefully underprepared to succeed at competitive universities and either require tutoring or end up dropping out or transferring at higher rates than other students.

2. Good students from highly competitive schools that don't make the cutoff often go to public universities in other states and may or may not return to Texas, resulting in a brain drain. I know that among my friends with high achieving HS students, the schools they are considering if they can't get into UT are not other public universities in Texas, but rather flagships in other states like Indiana, Arizona, Mizzou, OU etc.

My 14 yo starts high school next year and I am dreading the stress of this process. She's a GT, straight-A student and takes all Honors classes, but I'm under no delusion that will be a guarantee in HS. I can't tell you how many friends I have who have kids who graduated from our HS (in CCISD) who had GPA's over 5.0, were involved in tons of extracurriculars, and still were not sure their kids would be accepted at UT or A&M. Best not to put all your eggs in one basket.

[Brom]

Just to confirm my OP, number of courses don't have bearing on GPA because all scores are averaged?

[Dopo]

Originally Posted by Texas Ag 93

I can't tell you how many friends I have who have kids who graduated from our HS (in CCISD) who had GPA's over 5.0, were involved in tons of extracurriculars, and still were not sure their kids would be accepted at UT or A&M. Best not to put all your eggs in one basket.

I see you are familiar with Midwest universities
My son this year was accepted to OU, Missouri S&T, U of H ... but was not accepted to UT. He didn't apply to A&M.
I think, UT and A&M are just extremely popular and everybody wants to go there.
My son's GPA is 3.7/4.0 weighted (adjusted for AP classes) and a ACT of 31.
He's decided to go to U of H, we are just putting a hell lot of work into scholarships and we'll find out in the next few months how much it's going to cost.
I'm ok with U of H, I just hate the fact that is completely surrounded by ghettos.
One good thing is that it has a rail station right in front of the dorms.

[Texas Ag 93]

Originally Posted by Dopo

I see you are familiar with Midwest universities
My son this year was accepted to OU, Missouri S&T, U of H ... but was not accepted to UT. He didn't apply to A&M.
I think, UT and A&M are just extremely popular and everybody wants to go there.
My son's GPA is 3.7/4.0 weighted (adjusted for AP classes) and a ACT of 31.
He's decided to go to U of H, we are just putting a hell lot of work into scholarships and we'll find out in the next few months how much it's going to cost.
I'm ok with U of H, I just hate the fact that is completely surrounded by ghettos.
One good thing is that it has a rail station right in front of the dorms.

Of course everyone ideally wants to go to UT or A&M and pay in state tuition. That's ideal, right? Who would want to leave and go to another very solid (but not necessarily public Ivy caliber) school and pay the out of state rate? Apparently, a lot of people, because If I'm being honest, the same families who are sending kids to IU/Mizzou/OU/LSU did not seriously consider other Texas publics, even with scholarships offered. Then there's another subset (sometimes overlapping) of families, who, if grades and financial resources permit, are looking at Southern and Midwest elites like Duke, Wake Forest, Emory, Tulane and Wash U, or the highly desirable L.A. schools like USC and Pepperdine.

Some of these other states have crazy high tuition even for their own residents. We lived in Columbia (which I loved) for 5 years and both my spouse and I worked for Mizzou. Their in-state tuition for Medical School was over 30K a year and that was almost 20 years ago, when Texas rates were a fraction of that; though I know that's all irrelevant now and times have changed here as well.

And I'm much too early in this process to know what direction we might take with our kids.

ETA: One thing that I used to frown upon that I won't ever again is homeschooling. My husband's brother has 5 kids and they started home schooling them close to 10 years ago. Kid#1 (son) graduated from A&M a couple of years ago and Kid #2 (daughter) is about to start a graduate program in a STEM field back east which she chose from multiple scholarship offers. So, I mock no more....

[Dopo]

Originally Posted by Texas Ag 93

ETA: One thing that I used to frown upon that I won't ever again is homeschooling. My husband's brother has 5 kids and they started home schooling them close to 10 years ago. Kid#1 (son) graduated from A&M a couple of years ago and Kid #2 (daughter) is about to start a graduate program in a STEM field back east which she chose from multiple scholarship offers. So, I mock no more....

In my case, my wife is a stay at home mom,
at one point I told her, that part of her job is to make sure the kids get good grades, get scholarships and go to college.


In a way, it's a form of homeschooling, bad thing is that I'm always broke.

[Jtxg]

I don't have any suggestions, but will add that the top 10% thing is BS. I graduated 20 years ago from a highly competitive high school. I was in the top 20% with a 1400+ (I think 1420) SAT score. UT & A&M both said 'pass'. Meanwhile, SMU and Notre Dame (both pipe-dreams for 17-year old me to think my parents and I could afford) said 'sure'. Ended up going to and graduating from UofH.

As for someone commenting about the 'ghetto' around UofH. I lived there for three years (Cullen Oaks Apts). It can definitely be sketchy at times (or at least back in 2003-2007 it was), but whenever I went out, it was usually with a group of people. I was also probably a bit naive/oblivious at the time as well. I still have fond (albeit buzzed) memories of sitting at Frenchy's on Scott St late night....good times.