Our highly competitive and rigorous school regularly sends some National Merit Scholars to Baylor’s Honors College, University Scholars and BIC (Baylor’s Interdisciplinary Core) programs. They seem to find it worthy and challenging and give guidance counselors positive feedback. Some of the big positives that I hear often are class size, campus size, personal attention from professors and advisors and rigor of these programs. Most graduate in 3-4 years so obviously they get credits for many of their AP classes. These students are eligible to get into any public university in Texas on free tuition due to their high rank/GPA/SAT but they pick Baylor and usually their younger siblings follow same path as well,which is a big endorsement. Same goes for SMU and TCU as well. Some lucky ones get money from Rice but not many. It’s not that good kids aren’t going to public schools or not getting good education but ones who don’t have to worry about tuition, are free to make choices that paying students can’t.