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<p>Well, you’re right about that. My girlfriend’s son attends a very rigorous prep school which doesn’t rank its graduates. He had a 3.5 unweighted GPA at his school and a 1380 on his SAT and was rejected from UT. He, too, is white.</p>
<p>I think the reason a school with an auto admit program was chosen for this case is that with the auto admit program UT Austin was able to have a racially diverse student body without explicitly considering race. The auto admit program was started after some court ruled that UT Austin could not consider race in admissions. To continue to have a racially diverse student body, the auto admit plan was formulated. It was relatively successful in maintaining a racially diverse student body. Later, Grutter overturned the ruling that prohibited UT Austin from using AA and then UT Austin resumed use of AA for those spots not taken by auto admits. Thus the argument is that because UT Austin was able to maintain racial diversity with the auto admit plan and without AA, UT Austin’s use of AA does not meet strict scrutiny as needed to comply with Grutter.</p>
<p>Given the court’s composition most commentators think that Court will rule against UT Austin and most speculation has focused on how far the ruling will go. It’s possible that they will rule narrowly and make UT Austin stop practicing AA and leave it at that. Alternatively, they rule all public universities must seriously investigate or adapt plans similar to UT Austin’s auto admit rule instead of continuing to use AA. They could also overturn Grutter as well.</p>
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<p>This is possible but highly unlikely. The average SAT for the top 8-9-10 per centers is barely above 1800. </p>
<p>Students with SAT above 700 will usually be accepted at UT. An average of 1300 with a top 25 percent rank guarantees admission at TAMU. A 1200 is an automatic admit at UTD. Figures based on M/CR combination.</p>
<p>Fwiw, the rejection of the plaintiff actually shows that the system works as intended. The fact that the student could not be admitted at the other Texas flagships and had to look at a Louisiana public school is telling. </p>
<p>Students who fail to earn an automatic admission in Texas really do not have any reason to complain. The system should actually be revamped and limited to a lower percentage for the top 4 percent. The next 4 percent should require an additional SAT floor. </p>
<p>Fwiw, if this system only helped minorities, it would have been punted a long time ago. Its survival comes from the great support it gives and receives in the suburbia and the football crazy Bubbavilles around Texas.</p>
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<p>I’m not talking about “average” top 10 percenters. I’m talking about kids from HP, Plano, some other top districts and plenty of accomplished private school kids who are now being “capped.” I know too many of them, both in class of 2008 and up to today.</p>
<p>People should know that a bulk of the support for the top 10% rule comes from rural legislators, who know their kids likely wouldn’t get into UT but are now guaranteed automatic admissions for its top performers. Someone in West Texas who goes to a school with no APs now takes a spot from someone from Plano, which has a lot of APs. Not saying it’s right or wrong, it just is.</p>
<p>Xiggi in Post #23; BINGO!!!</p>
<p>From what I have read the Top Ten rule in Texas is steadfastly supported by rural white Texas legislators who previously complained that their constituents’ kids were not getting into UTexas-Austin. Every time there’s a new debate about the rule, rural Texas politicians let it be known that they will not support a change in the law.</p>
<p>I only offered the average SAT for the automatic admits as a reference to the claim that students with SAT above 1400/2100 would face a likely rejection by UT-Austin. I think that nothing could be farther from the truth. Such students, regardless of their ranking (or the not unudual absence of rankings at the most selective schools in Texas, are top candidates for admission. </p>
<p>The reality is simple. Students who score high on the SAT/ACT have extremely good chances to earn an automatic admission at UT-Austin, and with a SAT above 1300 to get an automatic at Texas A$M. If a student is not accepted automaticallty at TAMU, it means that it did not cross the 8-10 percent mark, did not score over 1300 and ranked in the top 25 percent. To be blunt, a student who does not score above 1300 or makes the top 10 percent should not really be considered for an automatic admission at one of the best schools in the country. </p>
<p>For students from HP, Plano, and plenty of other schools that love to complain about the injustice of the system, and did NOT ranked high enough, the CAP is a very fair proposal. For students from the prestigious schools that do not rank, being asked to start in the Summer session might be more of a hindrance. </p>
<p>In addition, it is good to remember that the automatic admission does not come with a choice of majors. The top ranked and most competitive students do rarely depend on the automatic admission as they seek admission to majors such as Engineering or Business.</p>
<p>Lastly, the view of this top ten percent rule is vastly different in DFW or Houston from the perception in other areas. While people from HP, Plano, Sugarland, or Westlake believe to be screwed, they overlook that the ten percent only remains viable because so many students --especially minorities and lower SES-- do NOT use their automatic admission. Despite being able to attend UT or TAMU, they end up attending UTEP, UT San Antonio, or the various schools in the Valley. </p>
<p>All in all, despite the utter lack of validity of this ridiculous case that will be decided at the Supreme Court, one could hope that the 10 percent rules gets a major change. And a change that will not be satisfying around the Texas Shangri-Las on Wobegone as the qualifications of the automatic admitted students should be increased and their number reduced to a much lower percentage.</p>
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<p>I’m not invested in this at all as neither of my kids were interested in going to UT. However, I know of at least five kids off of the top of my head from my D’s rigorous private school who have good grades ( 3.5-ish unweighted) and over 1300 SAT who were capped. If these kids had gone to white rural high, they’d all be automatic admits. They probably knew this, but made the decision to stay put in the private HS, so one could argue that they couldn’t necessarily complain. My DH made D2 apply to TAMU in order to at least have a couple of Texas options. She has grades in the reference above and high 1300’s SAT and we have yet to hear from TAMU. Certainly hasn’t been “automatic.” Fortunately, she’s already accepted a spot from her favorite, so again, doesn’t bother her at all, but it’s not the given you are implying.</p>
<p>Is it fair-I don’t know. I don’t really know the particulars of the case now before the Supremes, but I will be interested to read the decisions.</p>
<p>Without the auto admit - Is it fair to require the tax payers throughout the state, including the rural areas, to support state universities if kids in those counties, districts, and locals have little chance of being admitted? Im sure there are many in Texas hoping this law suit will end the current system . * be careful what you wish for*. Legislators have to answer to their constituents and its hard to justify supporting state universities when the kids from your area arent enrolled.</p>
<p>^ I don’t know, the majority of in-state kids here don’t have a chance of being admitted to U of Michigan and it hasn’t seemed to be a problem. Maybe Texas will be different.</p>
<p>Nrds, if your dd was in the top quarter of her class (the program is rank-based, not GPA-based), and she had a 1300 CR+M she certainly should have been admitted. I’d look into it if she met the criteria and wasn’t admitted.</p>
<p>[Academic</a> Admits](<a href=“http://admissions.tamu.edu/freshmen/gettingin/waysAdmitted/academic.aspx]Academic”>http://admissions.tamu.edu/freshmen/gettingin/waysAdmitted/academic.aspx)</p>
<p>Just curious … does anyone know how this works for unranked schools?</p>
<p>TuTu, I think it’s fair. After all, there are lots of roads my taxes helped build that I never drive on. Does that mean I shouldn’t support building roads? Educating Texas students is in everyone’s best interest, in the common good. Legislators barely support public ed as it is. I can’t imagine it getting much worse. What will happen is that it’ll become prohibitively expensive and the rural kids wouldn’t be able to afford it then anyway.</p>
<p>^ I’ll let Nrdsb4 answer about TAMU’s holistic review process, as I don’t know it as well as I know UT’s. </p>
<p>At UT, “for students from non‐ranking schools, a rank is estimated using the students GPA and grade distributions provided by the schools.” See holistic review formula (consisting of Academic Index + Personal Achievement Index) at pp. 4-5 and footnote 6 re: calculation of rank. <a href=“http://www.utexas.edu/student/admissions/research/HB588-Report13.pdf[/url]”>http://www.utexas.edu/student/admissions/research/HB588-Report13.pdf</a></p>
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I agree with Tutu. A school your kid is not permitted to attend is not the same thing as a road, which you are at least permitted to drive on whether you choose to or not. The point of a state university system is that all the taxpayers subsidize the education of the students. If a particular subgroup of taxpayers have little chance of sending their children there, why would they support such a subsidy?</p>
<p>In elite college admissions, the trend for several years now has been to move away from race and more toward socioeconomic factors. This trend is more (or mostly) the case at need-blind schools who want to increase their socioeconomic diversity, as evidenced by the growing number (30+) partner colleges with QuestBridge (over $2 billion in scholarships have been awarded through QB in the past 8 or so years). The UC system has, for many years, focused on background (since they can’t focus on race). Even the way that universities talk about their AA policies have changed, e.g. Stanford’s:</p>
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<p>This has been generally true of top universities and is becoming more true every year. You can see this in accepted students’ threads on CC: minorities with strong applications and high stats are continually rejected, while non-minorities (yes, even Asians, especially immigrant Asians) who are low-income/first-gen students get in. Colleges are realizing that the value of simply matriculating lots of high-income/privileged minority students is low. I think other posters are right that the move away from race-based admissions will be very slow and hard to notice. It’ll be first to happen at places that get a lot of qualified minority applicants (the top schools) and then over time will happen at more and more lower-ranked schools.</p>
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<p>I am afraid that this is a bit of a dark hole, as the second condition at TAMU is to be in the top 25 percent. A few years ago, the 25 percent rank was not needed, and this helped qualify students who attended schools that did not rank. Perhaps, Nrdsb4’s school does not rank or releases the rank in a timely manner.</p>
<p>I know the timing of the ranking release is important. My younger sister attended a school that made the ranking official only a few weeks before graduation. Despite the GC providing her valedictorian status to UT, this did not qualify her for automatic admission. She ended never applying to any schools in Texas, as she was an early admit somewhere else.</p>
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<p>Obviously, I do not know the rigorous private school where this happens. However, based on the accounts at a couple of rigorous private schools in the DFW area, there are reasons why the students of those schools seem to inherit an unfair treatment. This has to do with the yield on admissions. For starters, many of the students attending the top schools consider UT and TAMU as a safety school. The top percent is rather insignificant as the top ranked students are mostly looking at the typical CC faves! The interest for UT might take the form of appying to BHP, McCombs, PlanII, or the Engineering school (maybe I forget one) but again the ten percent rule has no impact for those programs. </p>
<p>So in the end, UT and TAMU face a great number of applicants who are NOT highly ranked and still would look out of state if given the chance. The result? Summer admission or CAP! </p>
<p>Attending a rigorous private school in Texas is not necessarily the safest bet in terms of gaining admission to UT. The silver lining is in the education.</p>
<p><a href=“Black at Stuyvesant High — One Girl’s Experience - The New York Times”>Black at Stuyvesant High — One Girl’s Experience - The New York Times;
<p>Wondering if this article affects anyone’s opinions on this matter?</p>
<p>It’s my understanding that the top 10% rule changed last year to an “open 20%” which allowed the university a bit more freedom to accept the high stat private prep school kids. I know the class of 2011 at my kids’ prep had several more acceptances to UT than the class of 2010 because of this change in policy. </p>
<p>Our kids attend(ed) a well-known SPC private that doesn’t rank. I know if a student is in the top 10%, the school will disclose rank for UT/A&M. Our D was never interested in UT; however, I find it strange that some of her friends who did want to attend could not get in even though they had 8-9 APs (4s & 5s), 3.8+ UW GPAs, and 2120+SAT/31 ACTs. Although those are solid stats, they don’t qualify for the top 10% at this private with a graduating class of less than 90 and acceptances to multiple ivies by those in the top 10%. Strangely, kids from rural or inner-city publics with dramatically inferior stats could by virtue of the academic climate of their school and the ease of falling in that top 10% can gain access. UT professors have complained about the lack of preparedness of some of the auto-admits. I know a few families who each year leave our private prep and go over to one of the local publics just to game the system and get into UT because it’s been a family tradition and the child’s dream. I think something must indeed be done. I’ll be interested to see how the court rules.</p>
<p>^ It’s my impression that the Fisher case is not about the 10% rule.</p>
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<p>Perhaps, you are making a reference to a 2009-2010 change that limits the percentage of students admitted to the University of Texas at Austin to 75 percent of Texas residents and the top 10 (or 8 or 9) percentile. Twenty five percent of freshman students admitted students should come from outside of the top 10 percent or from outside of Texas. </p>
<p>In the years previous to the change, Texas has admitted about 80 percent through the 10 percent rule. On the other hand, TAMU only had a bit more than 50 percent. </p>
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<p>There is a difference between not being an auto-admit and not “getting in.”</p>
<p>From anecdotal evidence, it would appear to me that the use of affirmative action is actually becoming MORE pernicious, not less, in many respects.</p>
<p>For example, it is well known that Asians are bearing a large brunt of the affirmative action programs, since they are purportedly “over-represented”</p>
<p>Further, it seems that colleges now want to give affirmative action to hispanics, not just to african americans, and are seeking out hispanic students, just so they can have “enough” hispanics in their freshman class for diversity purposes. As a result, some people who have experienced no discrimination whatsoever, and who may in fact be totally indistinguishable from a regular white person if you met them, are getting preferences in admission, just because their last name is Gonzalez or Fernandez.</p>
<p>I am in favor of affirmative action where a person is truly disadvantaged, or even a bit disadvantaged, but I am not in favor of giving an hispanic who might even be from a wealthy family an admissions preference just because he is hispanic, merely to make a class “diverse”.</p>
<p>Diversity for diversity’s sake seems to be the current policy. Rather than combatting the effects of real discrimination and hardship.</p>