That is true @CU123 And many will not be able to handle the level of work at UT because of it.
Actually, rank is used because 1° bridging the gap between lower income schools and upper middle suburban school in terms of budget would require statewide harmonization and thus greatly increase upper middle class taxes and 2° this ensures UT, which is a public university for all of Texas and for which all Texas residents pay taxes, selects the top students from the entire state, students who succeeded the best according to the situation they were placed in. Private universities select according to whatever criteria they want, but public universities must serve the entire state.
In addition, I object to the rhetorical opposition between “diverse” and “smart” in post #80. It may have sounded clever to you but it comes dangerously close to racism.
@MYOS1634, a process is already in place in Texas that supposedly equalizes the budgets between school districts. For example, my district sends 40%+ of all local school taxes paid to other districts in Texas. Unfortunately, COL between the districts has not been updated since this law went into effect and it is strangling urban/suburban districts and with the benefit going to rural districts. Austin ISD is sending over $400 million/yr out of district because their COL is still deemed close to Killeen’s.
From your posts, I am assuming that you support the 7%/10% rule. Many do not. In my area, families start planning in middle school which HS courses their kids should take so that leaves them more room to take AP courses in HS. As a previous student mentioned, if he had not played basketball or been in the orchestra, he would have made the cut. He got capped with a 34 ACT. This rule does not allow students freedom to explore new areas in HS unless they are AP classes. People take their kids out of good schools and put them in less competitive schools to make the cut. Even UT wants to get rid of the rule. They think they could actually have more diversity without it. This rule is really effecting people’s lives and not in a good way. The answer is getting into UT should not be such a big deal but when the choices of our schools are very limited, based on rankings, everybody is fighting for those slots.
I actually don’t support the 7% rule, I think a combination of the following would be fairer, the California rule (statewide qualification rather than per high school) + self rule (UT decides, with an enforceable/punishable mandate to ensure economic diversity is taken into account so as to maintain a rough equality between the state’s different regions and schools) but this is what people in Texas decided on, in part because the alternatives were all seen as worse.
However, Texas does have good universities with affordable choices (excellent merit) for high stats kids who don’t get into UT and kids with high stats and high income families have other choices.
Also, getting into UT should be a big deal: it’s a nationally-ranked flagship! 
And TAMU is the state’s second flagship, kind of like IU/Purdue,UMich/Michigan State, etc.
As I mentioned before, many in California would consider the top 7% rule guarantee very generous when thinking of UCLA/UCB/UCSD. The only students who can consider they have a guarantee are the valedictorian and salutatorian of each school, basically, and perhaps top 2% knows they have a good shot.
Thats the problem, the majority of people in Texas do not consider any school except UT and TAMU to be “good”. Also, those 2 schools are so different that if one appeals to you, the other does not. My DD could have had a full ride to TAMU but would not even apply because … of many reasons. I do like statewide qualification rather than HS because Texas has done a good job in equalizing funding between school districts. These kids, in the suburban districts, that are at 8% have worked so hard and achieved everything they were suppose to; strength of schedule, EC’s, volunteering, SAT/ACT scores and get rejected because of a %. I am glad to hear that somebody from OOS actually thinks some of our other schools are good because most people in Texas do not.
Texas universities outside of UT/TAMU may be considered as “public hidden gems”…
UTD with CollegiumV and a STEM major (or, even better, McDermott), is top-notch.
UHouston’s revamped Honors College is very good for students in the 28-32 ACT range with excellent grades at the top 10-15% level, and its offerings for both premeds and business majors are good.
UTSA’s Cybersecurity program is nationally known.
Texas Tech is not at the level of Virginia Tech but certainly holds its own with Michigan Tech, CPP, or NMTech (at the very least).
Texas State is good for Education, Musical Theater, Water Ecosystems.
The only problem is for kids interested in the Humanities - their options are more limited, it’s either UT or private if they have good stats.
The 7% rule is certainly one of the drivers of the AP arms race at S’s high school, and that ends up affecting students for private elites as well. Harvard gets probably 20-30 applications per year from S’s school, and usually 1-3 acceptances. From the GPA data in Naviance it’s obvious that most of those applicants have taken 12+ AP classes, and the accepted students are without exception from the top end of the weighted GPA pool…meaning winning the AP arms race with probably 14-15 APs and straight As in all of them. I laugh every time I read guidance on CC that elites are only looking for 4-8 APs and any more is unnecessary, and while I do wish it were true it absolutely is not in many Texas public schools. Students with an eye on UT don’t dare fall behind their classmates in AP count, especially if they’re going for competitive majors. Everyone’s heard about the kids just barely outside 7% who couldn’t get into UT at all, or the ones within 7% who couldn’t get into engineering. And as @GTAustin said, TAMU and UT are so different that not too many people like both. Plus there seems to be a pervasive attitude that anything besides UT/TAMU is not worth bothering with, especially for those who can get into them. I’ve gotten some incredulous looks and confused questions from friends when I say S likes UTD better than UT, even though he should get into UT CS. An acquaintance whose D missed UT for engineering is now looking out of state, and to my knowledge hasn’t even looked at schools like UTD, U of H, Texas Tech, or any other Texas publics. TAMU isn’t a fit, and apparently no other Texas public is acceptable.
@traveler98 I’ve been saying the very same thing re: AP classes. 4-5 AP classes will not get anyone at D’s Texas high school into an elite school. But I’m willing to bet that’s also true at other high schools outside of Texas, as context is everything. If everyone else from the same school is applying with a more rigorous course load, the student with only 4-5 AP classes would have to have something extra special to beat the others out for a spot. UTD and TTU are very popular options here as well and much respected in addition to UT and TAMU.
I’m a curious OOSer just wondering why with this 7% setup more TX parents don’t move their kids to less competitive schools?
My sister-in-law lives near a not-to-good zoned school in TX, so sends her kids to a charter. But the charter can’t be too competitive, since she was saying that her kid was the only one reading Harry Potter books in 4th grade. When she talks about her kids being the only ones at the school to do this and that and getting the reading award month after month, I wonder (but not aloud) if there mustn’t be a school where her kids would be better served.
@Ynotgo Many parents do choose less competitive schools, both public and private. I’m of the sink or swim mindset and would prefer my D get a good education than choose a non-competitive school solely to get into UT or TAMU. Interestingly, many parents with older kids thought they were preparing me for the high school competition when D was in middle school by warning me that she probably wouldn’t be in the top 10%. I was confident in my D’s abilities and work ethic and simply ignored them.
I also don’t think parents understand how competitive it is until they have an older child go thru the process or have a friend with a child that goes thru it. By that time, it is too late to change schools. These kids have outstanding grades/scores/ECS and have everything except the %, but they are close, all think they will be accepted and should be. But then they are not. Or how do you expect that somebody in the top 1% of a competitive HS will not to get accepted to their engineering major. These are the kids that are getting scholarship offers and accepted many places OOS but cannot get into or placed in their major at their state school. Then finances come into play, you can afford the state school but not the OOS/private school. Counselors, at these schools, are warning the students and trying to get them to consider other options but it is hard to believe until you see it over and over again.
@Ynotgo
I will add that while it may be true that going to a less competitive HS might help your chances of getting into UT, once your in, you will be competing with some of the top students in the state in your major. If your not prepared, those freshman calc, physics and chem classes can be rough. I think the holistic review by major tries to level this disparity in high school competitiveness.
@GTAustin I totally agree with you regarding TAMU and UT. Most kids seem to prefer one over the other based on a perceived fit. My DD applied to both and received some nice scholarships, etc to TAMU and most of her friends were going, but she just could not see herself there. She has since been to visit friends and this feeling was reinforced.
@Ynotgo, I imagine there are many reasons why people would not move to a less competitive school. Quality of instruction, money, family, whether the student is happy in the competitive school, etc. I’d rather my son be in a school where he is appropriately challenged even if it meant not getting into UT. I might feel differently if he was sitting at 8%, but it’s not easy to predict in junior high where a student will fall in the high school class rank.
I’m not saying that I personally would switch to a less competitive school. I’m a firm believer in the “if you are the smartest person in the room, find another room” approach for my older son. At one of the colleges he’s considering, it’s not even a sure thing that he’d be in the top 50%.
It’s just that I know how some other parents think and wondered if this is common in TX. I guess it’s possible that in junior high ~20% of the parents think that their kid will be in the top 7%.
“I guess it’s possible that in junior high ~20% of the parents think that their kid will be in the top 7%.”
Ha ha, yes probably! Or they might think that if the school is such a great one their kid won’t have any trouble getting into UT competitive majors even if they’re not auto-admit. Or, all the way back to the OP of this thread, they assume that if the student has good test scores and ECs they should be a shoo-in for UT.
@Ynotgo I’ll also add that the Naviance stats for our big competitive public high schools don’t help parents understand their kid’s chances at acceptance. For example, Naviance shows that 330 applied to UT Austin from the Class of 2016 and 320 were accepted from DS’s school. That would lead a parent to believe that there are acceptances to UT in the top 30% of the class. I think these Navaiance acceptances include kids who were offered CAP and leads to false hope. I wish there was a better way for parents and kids to understand their chances at getting accepted and then getting accepted into their major at UT Austin. So, the parents and kids have hope that they will get in because they look at that Naviance data freshman year and think they are good to go so they don’t move or play the game to have a chance at the top 7%.
Naviance reflects that CAP students were accepted because UT considers CAP an acceptance. We don’t have Naviance at my school but that would make me mad if the high school presented it that way. I get why UT thinks the way it does but the number of kids who clear the hurdle of CAP versus the UT freshman retention rate still has a huge gap. Getting to sophomore year in Austin is a lot more likely if you are in Austin as a freshman.
Why don’t parents change to a less competitive school? For one, most parents don’t know that UT has the top 7 percent rule instead of a top 10 percent rule.
One of the counselors my son had during high school (he had three due to turnover) told him it was top ten percent. Thankfully he knew better.
Second, most parents of a 14 year old are more concerned with their child’s adjustment to high school than getting into UT. How do you tell a 14 year old- I’m going to send you to a school where you have no friends so you can get into UT? And fewer parents are willing to move their kids later in high school.
Third, we don’t have much public transportation in the state. Parents who want to change schools from a neighborhood school have to drive their kids to the different school. Otherwise, you need to sell your house and move.
Fourth, most parents want the best education for their child. They aren’t going to settle for a bad school to finagle an acceptance to UT.
Fifth, you have absolutely no guarantee that your child will be in the top 7 percent of the worse school. Especially if you move during high school. Every district weights differently and they have very specific policies on how they handle transfers and some of them are clearly set up to discourage the game playing.
Sixth, most parents are not singularly focused on one school. Most parents are trying to figure out how the heck they will pay for any school. A lot of parents know their kids are not going to be happy at a school that large.
All these stories about people moving their kids to get into the top 7 percent are overblown in my experience. Do I see people choosing the second best school district when buying a house in order to be a higher ranking? Yes. I also see them do this with the thought their child doesn’t need the pressure cooker environment of the highest rated district.
I know a kid that goes to a school with 33 students In his class, and the school is private and unranked. Their “Valedictorian” was capped, and ended up at Harvard. A guy from the same school that would’ve been 20/33 was rejected from UT and accepted to Yale. It just seems crazy that they would be accepted to Ivy League schools, but not UT.
I’m guessing you don’t live in Austin area;-) Parents here are crazy about UT! And yes I do know people who have moved just before their kids hit high school. Old nextdoor neighbors did it and I think the across the street neighbor moved for the same reason but I don’t know that for a fact but he did put out an orange life size bull every Christmas and had longhorn license plates. Our home zoned school district is smaller so it’s harder to get in the top 7%.
No. I live in the DFW area. No parent I know is focused on one school. I knew one kid so focused on UT that he did CAP but not actual grown ups.