<p>I am from out of state and am planning on attending U of Texas-Austin. My concern is that all students that finish in the 10% of their HS classes in Texas are guaranteed a place at the University. How can the school control the number of students from year to year. Won't this guarantee put the University at risk of severe overcrowding? Also, won't it open the floodgates for unqualified students? Doesn't this combination put the university at risk for a diminished academic experience and ranking in the years to come?</p>
<p>Can anyone explain this and its affect on the school?</p>
<p>Yes those are legitimate concerns on the side of the argument in favor of eliminating the top 10% law, and people are trying to get it repealed as we speak.</p>
<p>The state has looked into capping the automatic admits to a certain percentage. It is a HUGE discussion every year, especially when so many qualified candidates are denied admission. It doesn't ever seem to change though.</p>
<p>I think there is a huge vested interest in rural and underprivileged districts to keep the 10% law in place. State representatives are delivering up guaranteed spots at a flagship university, and they will be slow to give that up. UT is quite open on this subject, and publishes extremely detailed statistics on the qualifications and performance of their students. Prior to the 10% rule, the majority of freshmen came from 60+ feeder schools – mostly suburban white public high schools. Now the freshman class represents over 500 public high schools from all over the state. UT has always been crowded, but I hear more and more stories from neighbors that the overcrowding is making it difficult to get required classes, which in turn is making it difficult to graduate on time.</p>
<p>I don't think that the 10% rule is necessarily a bad thing. I do think with a little tweaking, it may be a bit more fair. Graduating in the top 10% of any school is an accomplishment and should guarantee admission, but it shouldn't mean that school would absolutely be UT. There should be required minimums also. </p>
<p>UT's stats stay fairly competitive for a state school, so my guess is that there are not too many students coming in that aren't qualified.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>A flagship University should be able to select the best students for its university ... not those that fall within an arbitrary class rank.</p></li>
<li><p>A flagship University needs to allocate its resources wisely in order to provide the best education and student life within reason. This takes careful planning as to who they admit and how many. There can be no planning if 10% of the state can automatically matriculate.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>A better idea would be to guarantee a spot for the top 10% within the state university system, but let the students compete on merit for places at the individual schools.</p>
<p>so first of all, 'overcrowding' is the wrong word. the university has been the size it is for a long time and is NOT increasing in size due to this. it is not 'overcrowded' as the university was built to handle its size. also, sooner or later (hopefully sooner) this 10% law will be changed. This will probably happen in the next 1-3 years.</p>
<p>I hate the rule too. Granted it was nice getting accepted so early without having to worry, but it was unfair to a lot of very intelligent students at my school because their spot had to be replaced by someone else whose magnitude of intelligence and overall character may have been overvalued by such a rule. Hopefully the rule is changed or altered in the future or I can see real problems both academically and socially.</p>
<p>While the 10% rule may be "tweaked", I doubt it will change much. As previously reported, urban and rural areas like the rule. Plus the state legislature very rarely reverses itself. Plus we're dealing with arguably the worst state legislature in the history of Texas (how many special sessions did it take to work out school finance?). </p>
<p>When the law was enacted, the intentions were good but they just didn't think it through. As usual.</p>
<p>you have some good points, but they will have no choice to change it soon enough because of the number of 10%ers applying. I have heard that changing it to a 7% rule is popular.</p>
<p>Top 10% students are also guaranteed admission to Texas A&M, and maybe to all state universities (I'm not sure about that, but I'm sure about A&M). So, it's not like the top 10% of Texas h.s. graduates are all going to UT.</p>
<p>The top 10% guarantees admission to any state funded public school. The problem is that the largest percent of the top 10 studens choose UT. I believe in California it is the top 4% that are guaranteed admission to a state school, but not necessarily the one they choose. Maybe that would be a better way to do it.
Texas A&M guarantees admission to any top 10% or if you graduate in the top 25% with a 1350 (could be 1300) V&M SAT.</p>
<p>It's a 1300 for the top 25% at A&M. And yea, most of the top 10%ers are going to UT, and UT can't deny them unless they don't send all of the necessary application info. So thus, it provides UT with overcrowding and other non-top 10%ers (like me) a much harder shot at gaining admission.</p>
<p>I'm a student that is in the TOP 10 in a Texas school and I HOPE they take it away. I think the rule is ridiculous. I want my application to be read rather than just being accepted. The rule plainly SUCKS. There are a lot of people in my grade that definitely don't deserve a spot at UT - and I say this kindly. It is a sad rule...I hope they get rid of it.</p>
<p>On overcrowding, there is a plan in existence and in action that will actually reduce the number of students by 2 or 3 thousand within the next ten to fifteen years (target is 48k). With this said, there will be huge growth in the other universit of texas system schools. I think target for UTSA is around 30k (i have no clue what it is now). UT Dallas & El Paso will also grow significantly if i remember correctly.</p>
<p>So, for those of us '07 OOSers considering UT...can any UT students comment on how overcrowding (if there really /is/ overcrowding) affects academics and student life?</p>
<p>Or is it as big a party school as it ever was ;).</p>
<p>I think the 10% rule is going to have to be reduced eventually (if the applicant pool continues to grow over the next few years) and I would be happy if they got rid of it. I agree that rural districts are probably strongly in favor of the rule. My cousin is a student at a school in a small Texas town and is well into the top 10% of his class, yet he scored quite badly on the SAT and I am personally aware that the school's curriculum is well below that of the high schools near where I live (which happens to be closer to Houston). I doubt the law will be repealed or changed much, but I don't think students that attend a considerably weaker high school should be GUARANTEED admission to the best public university in the state when there are students that are much more prepared from good high schools that can't get in because there suddenly isn't enough space.</p>