<p>I go to a very competitive high school, for those of you in texas it is Westlake. I really dislike the top 10 percent law because it makes it harder for people like me who aren't in the top 10 percent but still have good grades to be admitted into great colleges like UT or A&M. Meanwhile my cousins who go to ball high and clear creek will be accepted much easier than me even though i have higher grades, just because they are in the top 10 percent. What are your opinions on the law?</p>
<p>Hey, capotodan, I’m a Westlake grad! I like telling people that Drew Brees graduated from our high school! :)</p>
<p>I don’t like the law, and neither does my dad, who is a UT professor. It’s really hurting the quality of the student body.</p>
<p>My nephew is a bright kid who goes to Austin High, and right now it looks like he won’t get into UT. He has bled orange since he was born. He’s working on his Eagle Scout project right now. He’d be a great asset to the University, so it’s their loss.</p>
<p>I got into UT Nursing as an in-state public school non top 9 percenter this year. I think the law is stupid but I understand the rational behind it. I would prefer them to go back to affirmative action and no auto-admit (the whole reason for the rule was to eliminate affirmative action).</p>
<p>It really does hurt the student body… I’ve come across valedictorian “hot-shots” who couldn’t even compete with some friends that were barely in the top 10% at my HS. I’ve come across auto-acceptees with lower SAT scores than what I got for DUKE TIP in 7th grade. It’s really pathetic what gets past that one number “filter”. For every great mind that gets recruited, it seems as though a couple under-qualified students slip in to balance it out. UT is really such a great school but there’s some fat here that needs to be cut. </p>
<p>I should be able to study at a table without being sincerely asked, “Is 24 times 2 48?” Is that too much to ask? And I don’t think “I don’t have my calculator” is a reasonable excuse.</p>
<p>At Westlake, as at other notable Texas super-powered High Schools such as Plano West and Highland Park, you will find that in a class of 500 kids, maybe 200 apply and 100 or so get in (20%). So, although the top 10 (actually top 8, now) rule is applied, it is clear that UT accepts many kids at these schools well below the mandatory cutoff. In fact, it was in order to give UT more flexibility in admissions that the cutoff was reduced to the top 8%, thus throwing that 2% back into the general pool without auto admission. Further. given the one-size-fits-all of the 8% rule, tons of kid who really shouldn’t be at UT end up dropping out, thus making room for all the CAPs and transfers that come in beginning in sophomore year. It is, I agree, a huge waste of UT resources educating all these dropouts who sneaked in under the 8% wire, but you have the legislature you have and the twists and turns of affirmative action are threaded everywhere in college admissions in the US.</p>
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<p>To a certain extent, they have to do that to keep freshmen beyond the first semester. If everyone was admitted under the 8/10% rule, those who were ‘top’ students in their lackluster schools would be in the majority and leave after the first semester.</p>
<p>…huh?</p>
<p>I would personally like to see the UT system rival the UC system. However, it seems as though Texas does not have the intellectual hot-bed that California has to feed off of. Though this is a wild idea and would never happen, I would be curious to see how it would turn out if UT Austin was divided in to 2 distinct universities with one purposely made in to the academic superior. Perhaps a 40/60 split of the total student body of 50,000 to create an elite school of 20,000 and a larger, but still notable, university with the other 30,000. </p>
<p>It seems that, in terms of prestige, there exists a vast divide between UT Austin’s sister universities and UT Austin itself. The new university could help bridge this gap and the upper university could begin sailing under the “elite” banner that President Powers seems to crave so badly.</p>
<p>Just a thought… I wonder where it could go</p>
<p>Although splitting UT Austin into two schools might increase selectivity and thus perhaps prestige at the undergraduate level, it wouldn’t increase the number of star faculty and thus wouldn’t significantly increase the prestige at the graduate level. There would also be the massive problem of determining which faculty go to which of the new colleges.</p>
<p>In regards to the problems with dividing the faculty, I already acknowledged the impossibility of my proposal. It was meant to be nothing more than a hypothetical situation that evinced and elucidated the implications of the current dichotomy present among the current student body due to the bright minds that are often recruited, on the one hand, and those that slip in under the radar on the other. In any case, UT is constantly seeking “star” faculty and having a more prestigious undergraduate body could only help in the long term. And beyond simply splitting the univerity, tuition could be increased at the more prestious school, something which would be understandable and would certainly improve our faculty “buying power”. But again, I haven’t really thought this through, nor am I intending for it to be taken seriously.</p>
<p>Frever,</p>
<p>Hehe, my post was probably a bit incoherent. I meant that UT has to admit good students from difficult to schools (even though they’re outside the 8%) to retain students. If you’re the top student at a school where grades are given out just for showing up, you probably won’t be able to handle the load at UT.</p>
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<p>Tuition increases are not always the answer. You would think that, but look at George Washington University. With the amount students pay there per year, it should be the top school in the country, in theory. Nope.</p>
<p>UT’s own data shows that students who are admitted that are in the top 10% with lower SAT scores have higher college gpas than those who aren’t in the top 10% but have higher SAT scores. It also shows that the number of high schools that students are coming from has increased dramatically. The law hasn’t stayed (although modified) just because the legislators are for affirmative action. It’s because a lot of rural schools starting seeing their kids going to UT and those legislators vote as well. </p>
<p>As a graduate student at UT in the 80’s, it was obvious that there was going to be a demographic crunch coming. The school couldn’t just keep expanding but the number of students who wanted to go to UT would. Did the legislature start funding other schools to reach Tier 1 status? No, and no one cared until the parents in Dallas and Houston couldn’t get their kids into UT anymore. I say Dallas and Houston because that’s where most of the kids came from. I can’t tell how often as an undergraduate I was the only student not from those areas. </p>
<p>So the students accepted have lower SAT scores and don’t have the same range of ECs as those at the “top” high schools. Yet, they are succeeding. If UT were a private school I’d say let them admit who ever they want. But as the state’s lead university, it has an obligation to provide the chance for all top qualified students to attend. People are upset because what is “qualified” has changed. SAT scores can be bought (preparation not cheating) and in Texas, attendance at “top” high schools is bought as well because of the funding mess. So now that a different qualification system is used people who used to be able to count on getting in aren’t. </p>
<p>If UT could show that the top 10% admits from the less academically challenging students were dropping out, don’t you think it would be all over the newspapers? They’re not. </p>
<p>It’s about money. The legislature won’t provide it so that there is more than one UT. UT alumni aren’t giving to the same extent because their kids aren’t getting in so they get the 8% instead of 10%. </p>
<p>It sucks for all the Westlake and South Lake Carrollton grads. But maybe if their parents had voted to support more education funding in Texas, they wouldn’t be in this position. </p>
<p>As for the brain drain out of state. I suspect it’s being made up by all the brains that were overlooked before the rule went into effect.</p>
<p>Many people recognized that 10% was too great a number and that is why the recent legislation brought the number down for UT, which I believe for now will be at 8% but it possibly could go down to 6% (some versions of the bill in the legislature had it set for 6% immediately). I would like to see it go down to 4 or 5%, and then it would achieve the original purpose, to provide opportunities for kids from all over the state regardless of the socioeconomic circumstances of a school district, and still leave plenty of room for very capable students from competitive high schools.</p>
<p>It was top 9% for 2012 applicants and it has now dropped again to top 8%.</p>
<p>[Automatic</a> Admission | Be a Longhorn](<a href=“http://bealonghorn.utexas.edu/freshmen/after-you-apply/automatic-admission]Automatic”>http://bealonghorn.utexas.edu/freshmen/after-you-apply/automatic-admission)</p>
<p>It is not likely to drop down to 6% or 4% unless the number of annual Texas applicants to UT greatly increases. The percentage varies so that UT will maintain what is actually the rule now for UT: that it will admit 75% of its freshman based on that percentage admit rule. All other Texas colleges still just have the 10% rule with no set percentage of admits. They set it at 75% for UT because it had reached close to 80% and was trending higher under the 10% rule. 75% was the compromise that will not now easily be changed. </p>
<p>The 10% rule came into being as the compromise to do away with considering race and ethnic origin in admission. Many considered that evil. Now many consider the percentage rule evil particularly those from very competitive high schools who are not in the top 10% (or now 8%) at their school but would likely have been easily admitted back in the days when race or ethnicity could be considered as a factor but there were no percentages for anything. And so it goes.</p>
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<p>Source please?
According to [url=<a href=“http://www.utexas.edu/student/admissions/research/HB588-Report13.pdf]HB588-Report13[/url”>http://www.utexas.edu/student/admissions/research/HB588-Report13.pdf]HB588-Report13[/url</a>] Table 6a, in 2009 the average GPA of auto-admits and non-auto-admits were equal at 3.01. And in the sub-1800 SAT score bracket, non-auto’s had higher GPA’s. These are the students I’m concerned about, the ones who were able to slip in to UT without proper review. And this statistic doesn’t even compare the two groups fairly. Many top 10 percenters likely would have been accepted without the bill and are inflating the average GPA of that cohort. I would bet that if you compared the average GPA of the group that would have been at jeopardy without the bill with the average GPA of their non-top 10% peers, the difference would be much more pronounced.</p>
<p>I’m not trying to recommend any specific changes. However, I have noticed that UT, with its massive student body of 50,000, has recruited students of vastly varying caliber. Moreover, I believe that it feels somewhat odd to place the top percentile of these students at the same university as the students found in the bottom percentile. I feel that something in the way of academic atmosphere and prestige could be gained by separating those who participate in bona fide research and internships from those who need a calculator to check that 24 x 2 = 48.</p>
<p>None of this will ever come about- at least in the next couple decades- but a part of me wonders how it might look if UT Austin became comparable to Berkeley. </p>
<p>And @drusba: In 2009, over 85% of those who were accepted or enrolled fell under the top 10% umbrella.</p>
<p>It seems like under the current system a small number of students with very low SATs are admitted solely because they are in the top 10%. Notably, the 668 students enrolled under HB588 with SAT scores less than 1500 got an average GPA of 2.32. It seems obvious to me that UT Austin could find stronger students not in the top 10% (or 8% now) than those students. Another random but interesting datapoint from frever’s link is that students in the top 10% did much better in engineering than students not in the top 10%. But the situation was reversed for students in the natural sciences. Part of the explanation seems to be that for students in the top 10% engineering attracted higher SAT students than the natural sciences, but the opposite occurred for students outside the top 10% where natural sciences attracted students with higher SATs than engineering.</p>
<p>Remember that most majors at UT are competitive. For example, the Engineering school is very competitive, and generally requires at least an ACT of about 26/27 to get in. The most selective majors such as biomedical and petroleum often accept students with only 32+. The business school, also, is competitive in admissions. Plan 2 is very competitive as well. Just because a kid squeaks into the top 8-9% of their high school class doesn’t mean that they will get a halfway decent offer from UT-Austin. If they didn’t do well on the SAT/ACT, chances are that they won’t get into their majors of choice. Thus, in a sort of way, UT is already “sub-divided”, with more competitive student bodies at McCombs and particularly Cockrell. Remember also, that at Texas A&M, a school likening a flagship, there is an automatic admit for students with anything above a 1300+ SAT M+CR.</p>
<p>The top 10% law really gives the kids in Texas, who might not go to the best schools, an opportunity to succeed in college as long as they do their work and take challenging classes. At private schools and at suburban schools this may be a problem, but generally those kids will have other options anyways.</p>
<p>I’m curious about how this law affects homeschoolers? It would be easier for us to go the private route than UT or aTm, correct?</p>
<p>^ The automatic admission statute is Section 51.803, Texas Education Code, and it mentions nothing about home schoolers. Section 51.9241, Texas Education Code, covers home schooled kids, and allows them to matriculate in Texas universities but does not mention the automatic admission policy. </p>
<p>Section 51.803 was amended in 2009 by a bill that added Subsection (a-1) that allows UT to deviate from the 10 percent policy. Subsection (a-1) does not mention a new percentage for automatic admits but puts into law the requirement that at least 75 percent of freshman Texas resident admits must be under the automatic admission policy. Following this policy is expected to lead to a top 8 percent cutoff for the next couple of years. However, I believe that (a-1) is set by Subsection (a-3) to stop having effect in 2016 and so further changes will be coming. How it evolves will depend on the extent to which the coalition supporting a high percentage of auto admits holds together, such coaltion consisting of the representatives from rural counties, from depressed areas of urban counties, and from depressed areas of the state such as the Rio Grande Valley.</p>