<p>^ Is there a need for additional white Bubba AA than the automatic Ten Percent provides? I don’t know. I suppose that’s a question for the Texas Legislature.</p>
<p>^The answer to that one is above my pay grade. lol.</p>
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<p>I mentioned his “unweighted GPA” because his school does not weight GPA’s. Neither does my daughter’s school. You have to mention that it is unweighted so that it is not mistaken for a weighted one. His school does not rank its graduates. D2’s private school does not rank its graduates either.</p>
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<p>Perazziman, it is obvious from my previous post that I would have a hard time to believe that your examples are common. But there is a sure way to make me look like a fool. In this day and age of public information, would you have any source that could back this up? </p>
<p>Let’s keep it simple. How about showing the GPA and SAT breakdown for the top quartile at any of the Plano High Schools. </p>
<p>As a reference, here are the latest averages for Plano: </p>
<p>School ---- Math Read M+R Wri Grand Total
PLANO EAST 579 542 1121 519 1640
PLANO SR … 599 560 1159 550 1709
PLANO WEST 610 569 1179 569 1748</p>
<p>Fwiw, I still maintain that it would be pretty remarkable for any student in Texas to be denied admission at UT-Austin or TAMU with a SAT above 2100.</p>
<p>As an extra reference, here are the total number of students who scored above 700 in separate sections of the SAT in Texas out of 166,012 takers.</p>
<p>Reading 5,118
Math 6,998
Writing 4,370</p>
<p>“Why is the Court so hot to hear this particularly unremarkable case?”</p>
<p>Because the composition of the court has changed since Gratz and Grutter (the Michigan affirmative action cases), and the likely majority in this case is eager to go farther in restricting AA than Sandra Day O’Connor was willing to go. So they voted to take the case. The plaintiff doesn’t really matter.</p>
<p>With apologies to Donald Rumsfeld: From the point of view of impact litigation attorneys and their allies on the bench, you go to war with the best plaintiff you can find, not the plaintiff you wish you had. What really matters is the lineup of justices and their policy goals. It looks like this plaintiff is good enough, so that’s that. It’s pretty much the same thing that happened with Lawrence v. Texas (sodomy case) overturning Bowers v. Hardwick. The liberal activists found a very good plaintiff in that case, but the important thing was the replacement of justices and the changes in our culture that were reflected on the Supreme Court.</p>
<p>/legal realist interpretation.</p>
<p>^Xiggi, I will try to dig up some stats, but in the meantime, think about it, there are international students, OOS Valedictorians, Athletes and all kinds of great applicants in the world that are competing for the those few seats at UT that are not taken by the Texas top 10%. I recall reading about a kid who was a National Merit Finalist who was rejected by UT and ended up in Johns Hopkins. </p>
<p>By the way, I have a son who is a junior with a PSAT 219/ weighted 4.0 GPA, currently taking five AP classes Computer Science II, Biology, Chemistry, US History and English and preAP Physics and preAP Calculus. His class rank is ~27 percentile. So, no admission to UT or TAMU for him. Now, if he were to transfer to a high school in say HISD, Alief ISD or Cy-fair (Cy Springs) he would immediately be ranked in the top 10%, probably top 5% and get an auto. admit with his current grades. By the way, he is a non-white Hispanic. He actually attended elementary and middle schools that feed Cy Springs- a school that had three National Merit commendeds and no semifinalists last year (out of ~ 900 kids). </p>
<p>For various reasons, he is not particularly interested in attending college in TX, so most of this is not a big concern to us. After all, there is a good chance his PSAT score will earn him National Merit semifinalist status and he will attend a university out of state where he will get a free meal (ride). However, there are many kids who are like him, that will not in TX.</p>
<p>hanna wrote:
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<p>and should this decision spill over into the private realm, don’t look for elite colleges to take up the slack in newly available seats by dipping into an expanding pool of eager “poor whites” anxious for admittance to Harvard, Wesleyan and Amherst. It doesn’t work that way. AA started out primarily as a recruitment policy. It took decades for it to become self-sustaining even at those colleges that were considered early-adopters. </p>
<p>Without AA as a roadmap and without that same sense of mission, what college in their right mind is going to send recruiters around the country beating the bushes for under-achieving students who can’t pay? At least with AA, so-called, “poor whites” had some leverage. But, if the plaintiff wins in this latest suit, they won’t have any.</p>
<p>^^ Hanna - Your response is spot on of course. The Court has a decision in mind and took this (very weak) case as pretext. I think that’s the point many are missing. The Court is not interested in whether Miss Prissy SAT 1160 should have been admitted in place of the HS Valedictorian from Pumphrey, TX. </p>
<p>I don’t have a horse in this race. But I do have a bias … I don’t think a horse should be eliminated from consideration just because of where the trainer lives. (Translation: I think white Bubbas who’ve shown initiative and perseverance, as evidenced by being in the top 10% of their HS class, deserve a shot at UT … lack of APs and SAT-Prep notwithstanding.)</p>
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<p>Same in Ohio. You’re penalized for taking APs if they lower your GPA, also if you attend a tough school and your rank is low. Selective private schools tend to take rigor into account.</p>
<p>If one is trying to maximize chances of admission to a state school here, then one takes easy classes to boost GPA and rank. If the goal is selective private, go for the rigor.</p>
<p>That is the prevailing wisdom, anyhow, and is borne out by my personal experience.</p>
<p>This policy also benefits kids in not-great high schools, if one believes a higher GPA is easier to get there than it is at better high schools. Which I’m fine with.</p>
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<p>Wasn’t there no writing on the pre-95 SAT? So the highest score was 1600, and not yet recentered? 1180 was considered a rather good score in 1984 and got kids into very selective schools, and had good grades.</p>
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<p>You are speaking about problems with comparing kids at the same school, i.e. kids taking AP/ Honors classes with those taking Academic level classes. I agree this can be a problem at schools that do not boost GPAs of students who take AP and Honors classes over students who take academic classes. However, we are talking about the problem of comparing the academic preparation of the top 10% at one school with the top 10% at another school because TX State schools treat kids in the top 10% at different schools as equals. So, hypothetically, the top 10% of a class at one school, that has no gifted and talented kids and none who take AP classes is considered equal to the top 10% of a class at another school whose entire class is made up of gifted and talented kids that take all AP classes.</p>
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<p>Perazziman, it might not be obvious at first, but you are offering context to my previous posts. You also confirm that a high stat student is not necessarily interested in attending a school in Texas, and in a way could not care for the automatic admission. We have already covered that the auto-admit does not cover the most selective colleges such as business and engineering. Simply stated, for most students who are high scorers and are strong candidates for OOS, there are few reasons to worry about the auto-admission. </p>
<p>Fwiw, the admission process is hardly the black-on-white some people might think it is. For instance, although your son might be outside the 1 first quartile, I believe you might surprised by the reaction of TAMU to an early application. I am relatively certain you would receive an envelope stamped HIGH SCORER on the front and an invitation to apply to unpublished scholarships as well as a strong indication of acceptance. </p>
<p>Again, failing to earn an auto-admission ticket hardly means a student with strong SATs will not get in.</p>
<p>PS Make sure to read the threads on NHRP right here on CC. Entomom has organized a lot of the inoformation here: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/hispanic-students/[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/hispanic-students/</a></p>
<p>Or check <a href=“College Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Tools”>College Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Tools; or <a href=“College Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Tools”>College Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Tools;
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<p>Humm, I am not sure how that plays out in Texas. The opposite is actually true. </p>
<p>With an obsession with the 10 percent rule, it is obvious that maximizing GPA and ranking is a game of epic dimension in Texas. It does not take much of a cynic to see why GPA boosting programs such as the IB have developed a cult-like following. The success of that questionable program can be directly traced to the unabated demand for gamesmanship! </p>
<p>It is ALL about finding every loophole to stack the weights on regulat grades.</p>
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<p>True. That’s why I also said:</p>
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<p>Our HS doesn’t weight GPA at all, many here don’t. We do decile rank only. No val or sal. </p>
<p>So a kid with a 3.5 in lower level and lots of elective classes and a kid with a 3.5 in all APs and advanced math or whatever look the same before you read the transcript, and most of our large state schools stop with the GPA, rank and test scores… Our HS says they don’t weight because they feel most colleges weight according to their own criteria anyway.</p>
<p>The way local parents “play the game” if they want their kids to go to state schools is they discourage APs. If they are looking at selective privates, then they encourage rigor, regardless of the GPA hit.</p>
<p>Does it seem that Texas is trying to encourage to take the least challenging program? Is there an epidemic of transfers into lesser high schools after freshman year?</p>
<p>PS: I didn’t mean to sidetrack the main conversation, just thought the difference from school to school and within a school to be interesting.</p>
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<p>Seems like the state schools could require applicants to recalculate GPAs according to a standard which gives weighting points for honors or AP courses in order to avoid this kind of thing.</p>
<p>(Of course, something similar might apply in college, where pre-med and pre-law students may seek out the “easy A” courses to boost their GPAs.)</p>
<p>^^The reverse gamesmanship was also attempted for a few years: kids who were top in low-performing high schools would transfer with their high GPA to a top-performing high school and trump the class that had been suffering under highly competitive pressures for years. A great strategy, but eventually killed due to parent pressure. Amazing that the teacher and administration of the high performing high schools never did anything about this bit of gamesmanship until the parents finally outed them. This is why parents remain crucial to the schools: teachers and admins really don’t have the time or interest to care. Even at the top schools in Texas, most of the “counselors” have never visited the name private schools and wouldn’t know much about any of them. If it’s not UT or Tech or A&M, you’ve exhausted their repetroire.</p>
<p>"… where pre-med … students may seek out the “easy A” courses to boost their GPAs."</p>
<p>Rocks for Jocks instead of Organic Chemistry? Now why didn’t I do that? Oh yeah, now I remember …</p>
<p>While pre-med students have to take the pre-med courses, they may try to select their other courses for GPA boosting purposes.</p>