<p>A&M has flexibility because of the fact that lots of top 10% students, especially from academically weak inner city schools prefer UT Austin over rural A&M. Perhaps it is because of UT’s urban location. Without pressure from the top 10%, A&M has flexibility in admitting students with competitive standardized / high AP Test scores under its academic admit & review program. In addition, Blinn team and Gateway plans aren’t offered to every student rejected at A&M. However, I do not think there is a huge difference between these two schools, both give priority to serving state tax payers.</p>
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<p>In programs such as Engineering and Business Honors Program, non trivial minimum score requirements exist, which make these programs more competitive. For example isn’t a min SAT Math score of 600 required for engineering? At A&M I think a student must have a qualifying Math Placement Exam score in addition to min 550 on SAT Math to major in engineering.</p>
<p>In the end, one cannot take high departmental minimum entrance scores and high average university SAT scores to a job interview and cash them in. It is about performing well as an individual, earning a high GPA, taking challenging courses and having good ECs (good team player, leadership skills etc.) that lands one jobs. Whether one did it at UT or A&M is inconsequential to most employers. They are both good schools. So go to the school that you will enjoy more. If that is UT and you couldn’t get in, go to UTA get a 3.2 and transfer in sophomore year.</p>
<p>Or they can go to Blinn and transfer into A&M.</p>
<p>Yep, if you are on Blinn Team it is a lot like CAP, except Blinn Team is not offered to all rejected TX students.</p>
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<p>NM Scholars are different than NM Finalists. Scholars are Finalists that received some type of NM scholarship, including those awarded by a college. The majority of scholars attending A&M received their award from A&M, the rest received a corporate sponsored award or an award from NM. Since UT does not offer NM scholarships, their scholars all received their awards from a corporation or NM. The comparison that would be more meaningful is how many NM Finalists enrolled at each school, but I do not know if those numbers are available.</p>
<p>Where can we get how many NMFs are enrolled to UT and A&M ? I also suspect the numbers (123 and 57) quoted. It seems like too small, although I may be wrong. (My D school (a public school with senor class size of 600ish) has 50 NMSF this year.)</p>
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<p>It would be great to compare those numbers. I looked for those numbers too, but could not find them, so I quoted the numbers I could.</p>
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<p>There are very few universities in the country in which 10% of the class is made of NMFs. Even when UT offered full rides to NMFs I believe they attracted less than 300 or 5% of the class.</p>
<p>I meant myD’s school is high school. Her high school senior class has ~8% NMSF this year which is a pretty good as a big public school. As I know, many of former students from her high school went to UT. So, 57 NMF in UT Austin doesn’t make sense at least to me.
Or, UT might not give admission to many good kids in order to lower UT’s national academic rank. :)</p>
<p>As mentioned above by others, CAP is yet another concern. I simply dislike it less than HB 588 since meeting a GPA threshold at a weaker UT institution is at least some proof of academic talent at a level of known quality. HB 588’s basic flaw is that it implicitly views all high schools across the state as somewhat equal. That’s exceptionally silly.</p>
<p>To put some crude numbers on all of this, some 1,500 of the 5,400-ish auto admits every year have standardized test scores that I consider as ‘low’ relative the rest of the student body. One to two hundred of these having exceptionally low scores. While some of these students would get admitted via holistic admission and a few more via CAP, I am of the opinion that imposing a minimum test score for auto admission – one near the current university wide average – will trim off much of the lower tail thereby making several hundred spots open for students with more academic talent.</p>
<p>I see HB 588 is a well intended, but functionally flawed, race-blind form of ‘affirmative action’. As the flagship ‘state’ university, a political problem arises when the profile of the UT student body differs significantly from the rest of state (as broken down by race, gender, economic status, county, school district, political precinct, etc.). Total elimination of HB 588 would cause the university to become even more different from the state as a whole. Such a situation will set a few of the state’s politicians into motion and it’s seldom good when the ‘least & dimmest’ amongst us start imposing solutions from afar … </p>
<p>I prefer to ‘mend it rather than end it’ if only because I fear what the alternative would be imposed on us from the ‘least & dimmest’ in the legislature (and possibly the unaccountable members of our court system).</p>
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<p>That could be one possible solution. However, the lower tail usually drops off at the end of the year due to weed outs and the stronger and persistent student with the 3.2 manages to replace it under CAP. So, aren’t you making a bigger issue out of this than it needs to be? </p>
<p>On the other hand someone with a low score who was in the tail may actually manage to stay and prosper by working hard, which is also a desirable outcome. Especially considering that some of these are students that did not have good opportunities in elementary, middle and high school.</p>
<p>I dont understand any more what exactly people are discussing here, so Ill come back to the first post.
The methodology changes are explained here
[Preview:</a> Methodology Changes for 2014 Best Colleges Rankings - Morse Code: Inside the College Rankings (usnews.com)](<a href=“http://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/college-rankings-blog/2013/09/03/preview-methodology-changes-for-2014-best-colleges-rankings]Preview:”>http://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/college-rankings-blog/2013/09/03/preview-methodology-changes-for-2014-best-colleges-rankings)</p>
<p>With 10% law UT cannot do anything about SAT/ACT scores of admitted students, so the only reasonable improvement can be done about graduation rate. Right now its the best in Texas, but far from the best in USA.</p>
<p>What UT is doing about it is described here:
[Guiding</a> Policy | The University of Texas at Austin](<a href=“Student Success Symposium Strengthens Culture of Collaboration - Office of the Executive Vice President and Provost”>Student Success Symposium Strengthens Culture of Collaboration - Office of the Executive Vice President and Provost)
Right now there are a number of UT students:
*with senior standing who are still undeclared or UGS (transfer students, I guess),
*studying the fifth year because they added double major their junior year,
*studying the sixth year because they changed major their junior year (somebody here on college board told about changing COLA to CNS (CS!!!) and starting with PreCalculus class!!!, all this after 2 years at UT and being broken)
*studying the fifth or sixth year because they did not have money to pay on time, their classes were dropped, and when they found money all needed classes were full and waitlisted. </p>
<p>So here is a website to discuss [Enrollment</a> Management | The University of Texas at Austin](<a href=“Student Success Symposium Strengthens Culture of Collaboration - Office of the Executive Vice President and Provost”>Student Success Symposium Strengthens Culture of Collaboration - Office of the Executive Vice President and Provost)
10% law is not going to change, so its useless to criticize it and suggest improvements, IMHO.</p>
<p>Just clarification on auto admission.
UT Austin changed it to 7% for 2014 Fall and 2015 Fall applicants.
[Automatic</a> Admission | Be a Longhorn](<a href=“http://bealonghorn.utexas.edu/freshmen/decisions/automatic-admission]Automatic”>http://bealonghorn.utexas.edu/freshmen/decisions/automatic-admission)</p>
<p>^Yes, it is 7% at UT because there is a cap on the number of kids UT has to admit under the top 10% law i.e. UT only has to take in 75% or 80% under this law. So, it is 7% now because legislators will not allow UT to take the top 10% from your daughter’s school and just the top 3% from inner city schools and say they couldn’t take more because they reached the cap. The net effect of the 7% rule can be that fewer kids from your daughter’s school attend UT since more from the top 5% than top 10% might be heading off to private universities such as Rice, Ivy league, MIT, Stanford, Caltech etc. However, anyone from your D’s school with a rank higher than 7% will have auto admit at A&M but CAP at UT.</p>
<p>The same for A&M not being allowed to take the top 3% from inner city schools. The school doesn’t matter for the top 10% rule.</p>
<p>And to clarify only students in the top 10% will have auto admit at A&M. Not anyone from your D’s school with a rank higher than 7%. I know what you meant but others may not.</p>
<p>UT NEVER gets top 3% from inner city schools, usually 1-3 students and IF they get scholarships. Otherwise these students cannot afford to go to UT. </p>
<p>Should I remind that more than 50% of UT students are from families with income more that 100000, which is the top 9% of USA population by income?</p>
<p>The list of 2013 feeder schools is already available.
[Admissions</a> Research: Texas Feeder Schools - UT Austin](<a href=“http://www.utexas.edu/student/admissions/research/feederschools.html]Admissions”>http://www.utexas.edu/student/admissions/research/feederschools.html)</p>
<p>I am more familiar with Houston inner city schools so here are some numbers:
Inner city schools:
C E KING HIGH SCHOOL 2
CHARLES H MILBY HIGH SCHOOL 2
EVAN E WORTHING SR HIGH SCHOOL 1
JEFFERSON DAVIS SR HIGH SCHOOL 2
SAM HOUSTON MATH SCIENCE AND T 1
BARBARA JORDAN HIGH SCHOOL 2
SCARBOROUGH SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL 3
STEPHEN F. AUSTIN HIGH SCHOOL (Houston) 1
CESAR E CHAVEZ HIGH SCHOOL 2
INTERNATIONAL HIGH SCHOOL AT SHARPSTOWN HS 1
I don’t see Furr, Yates, or some other HISD schools, which means 0 students.</p>
<p>Here are schools with different economic background of students population
SEVEN LAKES HIGH SCHOOL 52
MEMORIAL SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL 72
WILLIAM P CLEMENTS HIGH SCHOOL 64
WOODLANDS HIGH SCHOOL THE 57
BELLAIRE SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL 42
CLEAR LAKE HIGH SCHOOL 32
MIRABEAU B LAMAR SR HIGH SCH 35
CYPRESS RIDGE HIGH SCHOOL 30
CINCO RANCH HIGH SCHOOL 37
KLEIN OAK HIGH SCHOOL 36
STEPHEN F AUSTIN HIGH SCHOOL (Sugar Land) 30
I H KEMPNER HIGH SCHOOL 30</p>
<p>Total Enrolled from Texas Feeder Schools 6543 / Number of Texas Feeder Schools 927 = about 7 students per school</p>
<p>Wow. It convinced me UT Austin didn’t catch many good students with high SAT/ACT score kids. As a result, UT Austin’s rank was declined. Thanks for good analysis.</p>
<p>@Dad2013 - I assumed that was a sarcasm. It actually reinforces why that have a ACT/SAT score kids compared to other Texas state schools.</p>
<p>I admitted it. By the way, I like UT Austin as a alumnus and my D already applied. I still believe UT Austin is one of the great public college, leading many more area including graduate research. When I attended UT’s honors program information session, it looks much better than I thought. It can make good kids towards next post-graduate level. :)</p>