<p>I see no tragedy in a young man who can get into Cornell and can afford to go attending there when he didn’t get into UT (and he might have preferred Cornell anyway.) I would see a tragedy when a top-of-class low SES-minority student can’t get into UT, and then can’t afford to be anywhere but perhaps the local community college (or no place at all).</p>
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<p>Playing the football card is a bit hyperbolic. The real issue that the fixed ten percent rule was getting too close for comfort, with an inability to increase the number of spots combining with not only a growing population but a growing population of qualified auto-applicants deciding to opt for UT (as opposed to staying closer to home.)</p>
<p>While UT would not have any issues in getting his football recruits admitted, a class composed of 90+ auto-admits hampers the recruiting of OOS and international students. Hence the implementation of a 75% auto-class and the derived percentage of 7 to 10 percent – which might get even lower if more students of districts with a poor attendance at UT start changing their minds about the welcome mat in Austin. </p>
<p>As far as the disadvantages of private schools, it is a mixed bag. Some schools actually do not live and breathe the Austin scene, and refuse to play the ranking game. They prefer to use a different ranking and communicate rankings as top 25 percent to augment the chances of that particular group at a number of private schools that appeal to their “clients.” Other private schools, including the top school in Texas, has suffered from the extremely low yield of its 10 percent. What good does it for UT to reach below the ten percent of a graduating class at Hockaday or St Marks, when none of the top ten students consider UT a great bet, unless it is at the business and engineering schools or via Plan II. – admissions that are NOT relevant to the top 7-10 percent rule. After all, people do not consider an investment of $200,000 at the above named schools to have a great ROI if UT or TAMU is the objective. If that were the case, Highland Park or the Plano academic factories work MUCH better. </p>
<p>All in all, the debate around the 10 percent plan is really not fueled by disadvantaged student at the elite or sub-elite private schools. Neither is it very important in the poorest area. Where the battles rage – for the 10 percent rule and the Fisher’s types-- is in the suburban Shangri-La where some expect to have it their way, and that means getting double or triple the number of auto-admits into UT, and for the no other reason that the choices for those 9-25% ranked students are NOT that great outside their protected bubble. Unless they can score two 650 on the SAT and have a direct admit in College Station. Something that seem quite hard for those students. </p>
<p>Although this case has little to nothing to with Abigail Fisher, she is the perfect poster child for the complainants: underachieving and entitled students who realize the free pass has gotten a lot harder to get!</p>
<p>PS I hope it is clear that this post is written by someone who LOVES UT-Austin – despite its shortcomings.</p>
<p>That’s fine cpt, I understand. </p>
<p>To be honest, I’m reading these threads, and trying to decide whether I like Texas’s x% rule (which is a bit of a derail, given that it’s not the part that’s under dispute). I’m sort of attracted to the objective aspect, where you know that if you’re in the top x% at your school academically, then you’re absolutely in. I also like it because it keeps a focus on academics, addresses real cultural and SES diversity (which I think tends to be undervalued compared to skin color or ethnicity), and it takes into account the broad mission of being a state-wide resource. </p>
<p>But I’d like to understand what kind of well-qualified students are actually being rejected. According to the overall admissions stats, UT isn’t an especially selective state flagship. But Texas is a big state, and there are only so many slots. Top 8% guaranteed isn’t all that bad. If you look at Big 10 schools, for example, there are going to be lots of 2100/3.5 students who can’t go directly to their flagships.</p>
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<p>No, you can’t make that inference. Total COA is about $25,000 at UT, and about $20,000 at UF. Both use the federal methodology to determine need, so for students submitting identical FAFSA data, EFC should be the same at either school; but for students with identical EFCs, “need” will be higher at UT, because its COA is higher. Let’s say you have a student at each school whose EFC is $10,000. That leaves $15,000 in need at UT, and $10,000 in need at UF. UT meets (on average) 78% of need, so the student at UT gets $11,700 (= 78% of $15,000) in need-based aid and is “gapped” $3,300. UF meets 72% of need, so the student at UF gets $7,200 (=72% of $10,000) in need-based aid and is “gapped” $2,800. It’s not 50% more expensive to attend UT net of FA, but it is more expensive.</p>
<p>But even those figures are probably misleading. UT awards a lot more need-based grant/scholarship aid, $143.5 million in 2012-13 from all sources (federal, state, institutional, and external third parties), compared to only $73.4 million at UF. That’s nearly double. But UT hands out only $5.9 million in merit scholarships, most of it from external third parties (Kiwanis, National Merit, etc). UF distributes a whopping $130.1 million in merit awards, about half of it ($65.2 million) from the state, another big chunk from external third parties ($45.3 million), and a healthy fraction from institutional sources ($17.9 million). So in total grants/scholarships, need-based + merit, UF students are getting $203.5 million, while students at UT are getting $149.4 million. So not only is total COA about $5K lower at UF, but UF students are coming in with a lot more merit scholarships, further reducing the “need” that the institution is trying to meet with need-based FA. (Of course, some fraction of the merit scholarships are going to students without financial need, as is always the case).</p>
<p>And UT is the larger school, with about 40,000 undergraduates to UF’s 33,000; so on a per capita basis, UT students are getting on average about $3,737 in grant/scholarship aid (merit + need-based), while UF students are getting on average about $6,167.</p>
<p>This also shows up in student indebtedness. For the 2012 graduating class at UT, 50% of the class had borrowed, with an average indebtedness of $26,097. At UF, 41% of the class had borrowed, with an average indebtedness of $19,636. That’s a big difference, especially for lower SES students. </p>
<p>Judging by the Federal need-based aid awarded at each school ($46.3 million at UF, $47.5 million at UT), there are probably similar numbers of Pell grant recipients at each. Edit: This is further confirmed by data available in the Washington Monthly college rankings,
which show UF with 28% of its student body being Pell grant recipients, and UT with 25%.</p>
<p>Bottom line: the financial challenges of attending UT are probably significantly more demanding for lower SES students than those of attending UF–though the latter are not trivial, either, since both schools “gap” students with financial need.</p>
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<p>As it is in Texas, I think that the number of 2100 SAT scorers who cannot earn an admission at their flagship(s) is pretty slim at the B1G, with the notable exception of, perhaps, Northwestern. Obviously, I did not miss that the qualifier is 2100/3.5 to add a GPA that might be entirely pedestrian at your typical public high school. </p>
<p>Again, to attend one of Texas’ flagships, a 2100 (even with a 800 W score) is all that is needed for a student ranked in the top 25%.</p>
<p>texaspg, I don’t think UT depends very much on the ranking of the football team to attract students. Apart from decent to excellent academics, depending on the field, UT offers the city of Austin, playground for the young and fun-loving, while A&M has only College Station-Bryan. Because of that, A&M starts off far behind in the minds of many prospective students and it has to try very hard and pull out all the stops to compete. A&M does do well with the rural and small town kids, but I suspect it has more difficulty winning the cross-admit battle with the urban and suburban kids.</p>
<p>Re: meeting need at UT versus UF</p>
<p>Perhaps just going to the net price calculators at each school and putting in students from different household incomes would be a better comparison than making indirect comparisons based on “percentage of need met” and the like.</p>
<p>UT’s net price calculator says that, for an in-state dependent student from a household of 3 with 1 in college with income of $25,000 from one parent, the net price is $12,998 after grant aid. UF comes up with $9,536 for a similar student living in Florida.</p>
<p>$9,536 would be a stretch but doable on Stafford loans plus a reasonable expectation of student work earnings; $12,998 would be somewhat beyond that.</p>
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<p>Some AA defenders like to mock Fisher, but she does not ask for a “free pass”, just not to be discriminated against on account of her race.</p>
<p>^ Beliavsky - Please be more precise. The Race Bonus did not cause Fisher to be denied admission, as proved by the 168 minority applicants with better stats than Fisher who were also denied admission. As a practical matter, cpt’s nephews might have lost admission due to minority students with race bonuses (though it’s more likely they lost out to a promising cornerback and a reserve linebacker). As a practical matter Fisher wasn’t getting into UT … period … race bonus or no race bonus.</p>
<p>And she wasn’t.</p>
<p>^^ Also, keep in mind that this isn’t a fresh issue for the Court. Fisher is asking current Justices to overturn SCOTUS precedent. Her case for doing that is really, really weak. That, and the Hopwood experience, are why I think it Grutter will not be overturned. “Critical Mass” will be upheld … for now. The Court is scheduled to deliberate a similar case next session.</p>
<p>^^^ And … so long as I’m on a roll … another thing to keep in mind is the prominent comment by Sandra Day O’Conner in the Grutter case. She hoped/expected that the academic gap between majority and minority applicant groups would disappear over time, and that special measures to achieve “critical mass” would then disappear. Current Justices may agree with those sentiments.</p>
<p>If I remember correctly, SDO expressed the hope that AA would no longer be needed in 25 years when Grutter was decided. It’s only been 10 years.</p>
<p>“I don’t think UT depends very much on the ranking of the football team to attract students.”</p>
<p>I am only suggesting the dynamic can change in the coming years. UT was the premier football program in Texas until last year for the past 10 years or so while A&M lagged behind. Improvement in the fortunes of the team definitely can play a role in improving their profile in people’s mind. </p>
<p>I am also surprised by how much closer A&M is ranked in engineering and business these days. Gone are the days when UT was king of business.</p>
<p>While I’m in favor of affirmative action, I don’t like Texas’s plan.</p>
<p>I’m going to take the elite schools out of the equation, since those are schools where no one is an auto-admit based on stats alone. But in the vast majority of schools, public and private, there is a certain threshold above which a combination of SAT + GPA/rank can and should be enough for admission barring any red flags in the application. If a school’s average student has an 1800 SAT, with a commensurate transcript, an applicant with a 2100 in the top 10 % of his class should really be a shoo-in. </p>
<p>What holistic admissions essentially does is raise the minimum academic threshold that an unhooked applicant needs for acceptance. On paper, a student with a 1700 or 1750 applying to the above school should have a pretty good shot of acceptance, since a full 50 % of the student body is going to fall short of that 1800 median. But if we consider that a significant portion of that lower 50 % is accounted for by people with various hooks, the chances of the unhooked kid in the 1700s is much lower. A certain percentage of kids in that range, particularly toward the top of it, will get in, but many won’t. And I have no problem with that, because I really don’t see a student who falls below the average as in any sense “entitled to” or even necessarily deserving of admission. If he had gotten in, it would have been as a borderline case anyway.</p>
<p>What Texas is doing is different, because their plan results in students well above its academic profile getting frozen out simply because of the high school they attended. The idea that a kid in the top 9 % of a suburban high whose SATs put him in the top 75% of the school’s first year class is fighting for a very few spots while a kid whose scores fall in the bottom 25 % in the top 8 % of a failing district is an auto-admit doesn’t sit well with me at all, and seems fundamentally unfair.</p>
<p>Am I saying that there are certain kids “entitled” to get in? Frankly, yes. Technically, no one is “owed” a job either, but if you aren’t getting one for discriminatory reasons, that’s still a problem that may require legal intervention. When a formula designed to increase minority enrollment results in some students with comparatively stratospheric stats - as opposed to students who maybe-sorta would have had a better chance if race weren’t taken into account - not being admitted, I think we’re dealing with fundamental unfairness, particularly when the school in question is a flagship state university.</p>
<p>That being said, Abigail Fisher’s case is about the holistic portion of admissions. I’d have preferred to see a lawsuit from some of the much stronger students who have been cited in this thread take on the 8 % rule directly.</p>
<p>The kids in those “failing districts” are fighting every bit as hard, if not harder (given their personal challenges) to get into that top 8% in their school as are the ones in the suburbs. They were the ones who were ALWAYS frozen out.</p>
<p>It’s a state-funded institution, and the state has a legitimate interest in ensuring that folks who otherwise might find themselves condemned to generational poverty (at state expense) find a way out through education at its top institution. The state does NOT - or so it seems to me - have a legitimate interest in ensuring that suburban kids who will be going to college anyway get into the state institution of their choice (they certainly can get into virtually all other state colleges and universities.)</p>
<p>^^ None of the above is part of lawsuit and is not up for discussion by SCOTUS. The only relevant piece has to do with 5% or so admissions UT is using to holistically admit students with a preference for race as they see fit to meet their institutional goals.</p>
<p>The 10% rule came about in order to eliminate affirmative action but to accept inequalities of education and resources in different schools. The rule does not guarantee a seat specifically at UT but any one of the State run schools in Texas.</p>
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<p>There is little evidence the gap is closing. Are we to have racial preferences until they do?</p>
<p>[SAT</a> scores are down and racial gaps remain | Inside Higher Ed | September 25, 2012](<a href=“http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/09/25/sat-scores-are-down-and-racial-gaps-remain]SAT”>SAT scores are down and racial gaps remain)</p>
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<p>“There is little evidence the (academic) gap is closing. Are we to have racial preferences until they do?”</p>
<p>Excellent question. What was Einstein’s definition of insanity? Unfortunately, “It ain’t working, try something different” is NOT a common feature of institutional DNA. Connecticut, for one, has an abysmal record with regard to equalizing secondary education for its citizens. And yet the state refuses to abandon its approach, despite decades of consistent, measurable failure.</p>
<p>@Beliavsky</p>
<p>No college admissions process would close that gap. Closing that gap would involve dealing with it’s root cause; lower SES, single parent homes, cultural, language, failing schools, etc. </p>
<p>AA is dead for college admissions. Based on Grutter, SCOTUS is willing to allow colleges to “fine tune” admissions to reach the mythical “critical mass” to meet educational needs. </p>
<p>The Fisher case has raised the question again about how do you define “critical mass” without using quota’s, and who makes that determination. </p>
<p>Back on subject, the more I think about this case, the more I think SCOTUS will punt (4 to 4 ruling or a ruling on Standing).</p>