<p>State supported schools in Texas are required to admit any applicant who is a Texas resident and is in the top 10% of their graduating class. This includes Texas and TAMU, as well as other non-flagship schools...Tech, Texas State, etc...</p>
<p>Texas (UT-Austin) and TAMU (Texas A&M), the two main flagships are flooded every year with applications from top 10% Texans... and they have come up with procedures to make room for qualified Texas applicants outside of the top 10%. At TAMU, they have a program for academic admits...top 20% plus SATs over 1300 are automatic academic admits. At Texas, if they run out of room after accepting top 10 percenters, they will try to admit high scorers/extraordinary ec candidates outside of top 10% through their summer admit program or coordinated admissions program (CAP). Most kids don't mind the summer thing, but hate to be capped. </p>
<p>This is an extremely unfortunate situation in our state. At some competitive schools where only the top 50 kids makeup the top ten percent, you might have 10 kids tied for number 1 with perfect GPAs. The remaining 40 kids are near perfect. (Kids shouldn't have to be perfect nor should they face such intense pressure so young.)</p>
<p>Recently, there was an newspaper article about a girl from Austin with a 6.8 and a half dozen AP classes who was not top 10 percent and who was capped at Texas, while another top 10 percenter from a lower performing high school got in with a below 3.0 GPA and no APs. The graduation rate is falling at the better state schools because kids who are ill-prepared are admitted when they should perhaps be steered to junior colleges or community colleges for a year of prep prior to transfer.</p>
<p>But, this is not the fault of the colleges. They are very unhappy with the law. This the fault of the Texas legislature that abolished affirmative action in the state college admissions process in our state. The irony is that the conservative legislature was trying to remove race and quota from the process and they ended up damaging the children of their own affluent constituency. Those well-heeled kids are the students at the highly competitive schools were you have to be perfect to be top 10%. </p>
<p>This has also led to rank and gpa manipulation in the school districts. Many districts succumb to the pressure to create artificial levels that earn more GPA points and therefore high ranks. This is true in our district, where we have AP, Honors or Gifted and something called 'accelerated' that is NOT AP or Honor/Gifted. All earn the same GPA points...so AP and Honors have basically become unweighted. In our district, the internal struggle between the kids who just want top ten percent so they can go to Texas or TAMU, and the kids who need the high rank AND APs so they can go Ivy, is intense. Both are fighting for the same prize but for different reasons. And the latter group has an harder time acquiring the prize.</p>
<p>For an out of stater, is even more difficult at the highly desirable schools like Texas and TAMU. Not because the oos candidates are not wanted, but because they are often set aside while the schools struggle with meeting the requirements of the top ten percent law.</p>
<p>I tried to make it brief...but I can really get on a soapbox about this issue. :-)</p>