@jomarch Your advise not to take AP/IB honors courses is not a good one. All the school counselors in all the info sessions I had attended for my S and D in the last couple of years, have very clearly stated that the schools DO look at the RIGOR of the courses taken by the student. If a school is not offering AP courses, it is a different matter. If a school is offering AP/IB courses and the student has not taken them they need to have a very good reasons for that.
@darktoform31 Several people were notified of their admission to polymathic in late Jan or early Feb.
@JHuff11 What college did you apply to?
AP course is must. It should take as many as you can but need at least get the grade of “4” or “5”. Otherwise, do not send to colleges that apply and please remember do not choose test score on AP auto sumbit to colleges that you apply . In case you get a grade lower than “4”.
My D was rejected. Our problem is we come from a very rural OOS school that offered 3 AP courses last year (she took 1 - AP Literature) as the other 2 were offered during the same time. This year the school didn’t offer any AP courses and only 1 semester of College English through local 2 year college. We get that were fighting an uphill battle against bigger schools but any suggestions on possible transfer after a year at UW Milwaukee or Columbia College (Chicago)?
WHAAAAT?! Only FIFTEEN percent of the freshmen class are in-staters who weren’t part of the top 7 percent?? I got hella lucky bruh lol
@rach98n @collegePapa oh no, I’m not advising anyone to take on a course load that is far too easy for them. I’m just saying that there are students with that courseload who can manage to stay in the 7% because of it. And of course quality/competitive-ness of the overall high school student body does play a huge factor of the auto-admit rule, but nonetheless if you’re in the 7% then you’re in UT
@witxbound
Actually, I highly doubt a lack of APs let to your daughter’s rejection.
Last year I was accepted into UT Austin Aerospace Engineering OOS with no APs on my transcript.
I understand that its very competitive for an OOS, however the hardest thing to do is get into UT as an in-state student who is not in the top 7%. The top 7% make up the majority of the 75%. This leaves the in-state, not 7% students fighting over a few remaining %. The other 25% UT seems to like to diversify things, and bring in as many out of staters and international students as they can.
Also most Texas schools give extra GPA points for AP classes, so taking as many AP classes is the only way to land in the top 7%.
@jomarch Texas public high schools rank based on weighted GPA . Therefore it is unlikely that a top 7% kid takes less than the most rigorous classes available. A particular high school might just not have many APs or honors classes or the overall college preparedness is not good but auto admits from such a school will likely not get into a competitive major at UT.
@texasfan-- Texas law says 90% must be from Texas. The first 75% are the top 7%, the next 15% are TX kids who are not in the top 7%, and the last 10% are OOS and international. Current enrollment is 3% international and 7% OOS. It’s competitive for all kids who aren’t auto admits, and many of those kids have gone to competitive schools and fought for 3 years for that 7% spot.
@JAMCAFE
Those students would be affected by low test scores, not by a lack of AP courses.
Also, numerous AP/Honors courses don’t say everything about a student’s college readiness. See: dual enrollment courses.
@jomarch Many people do not understand the auto admit rule. Auto admit only guarantees ‘an admission’ to the UT. What it does not guarantee is the “major” a student wants even if they are an auto admit. To get the major desired, even auto admits have to qualify based on merit. Of course to get into Honors list such as Deans etc is much more difficult, especially when each of these Honors like Deans, HSS etc have only about 50-55 seats.
@JAMCAFE is right about the weighted GPA where the weight for AP/IB is higher than the regular courses.
If one pays close attention to the requirements stated by each of the colleges, one can find out that some of the courses like environment sciences etc are not treated as a substitute for a required science course for admission.
@texansfan1 False. The valedictorian of my class had ONE AP class while every one below him had 6 or 7. He jus took Honors courses, which are 50% less challenging than AP but worth the same amount of points. He also had ZERO extracurriculars and still got into McCombs Honor Program with a 29 on his ACT. Its really quite ridiculous.
@avantgardeee I think it’s significantly more common for only AP/Academic courses to be offered (no in-between that still has a higher weighted GPA.) I could understand acceptance into McCombs itself, even with this discrepancy (required auto-admits and what not…) but the Honors program might signify some other qualities other than scores that are taken into consideration (because surely they don’t base it strictly off GPA/class rank.)
I can’t speak to Business Honors, but the Plan II Honors booklet specifically states that test scores are only 20% of the criteria reviewed to make offers of admission. It’s a holistic review and there must’ve been other aspects of the students app that compensated for the relatively low test score.
I’ve never heard this or read this. What I have read is that 75% come from the auto-admit program. The other 25% come from in-state non-7%, OOS, and International. If 90% of the freshman class is from Texas, that simply means that they holistically chose 15% of the 25% from Texas applicants.
What I said was not false. Of course there are exceptions but you shouldn’t expand the exceptions to be the norm. In every high school I know of, more GPA credit is given to AP courses. That is the only way that students can get 4.5 and 5 GPA’s on a “4 is an A” scale. For the most part, the top of the class take a lot of AP classes.
How the schools weight their classes varies. Our district, like @avantgardeee’s school, gives the same number of points for AP, Honors, GT and DC courses. I have heard of top kids taking mainly Honors instead of AP. But generally at our school, the top kids take all the APs and DCs (equally hard at our school) they can, and only drop “down” to Honors if the AP class doesn’t fit in their schedule.
Here’s a weird weighting method to contemplate. One large Texas district allows students to take as many APs as they wish, but they only get the extra GPA points for 3 courses per semester. That means some kids will take 6 APs but many will purposely take only 3 per semester. With all As, they all have the same GPA. Each school in the district ends up with about 20 “Valedictorians”. At one scholarship banquet we attended, there were several kids in the running from the same school and all were “valedictorians”!
Not only are Texas colleges restrained by the legislative requirement to accept “top” ranked Texas students, the colleges have to deal with weird weighting methods and schools that don’t weight and don’t rank and rigor of courses in 49 other states and practically every country in the world. They are going to make mistakes in their holistic review. That’s the only explanation I can think of for why some outstanding future college grads did not get in to UT. It’s UT’s loss.