<p>Just curious, about the motives, behind this move?</p>
<p>Some programs are underpopulated because top 10% students aren’t interested in them. I’m not entirely sure, but I think social work is one. By giving themselves some leeway with the advised top 10% rule, they can craft a freshman class that will be more diverse in educational objectives and interests, and therefore fill up those underpopulated programs.</p>
<p>It caps the number of kids UT must accept under the top 10% so that the school has more flexibility to craft the kind of class it wants.</p>
<p>Official answer: Because the number of graduates is supposedly is growing, it will reach a breaking point where they can’t accept out of state kids, then they can’t accept any non-top-ten kids, including football players, so it absolutely had to be changed.</p>
<p>The actual answer: To appease the grumbling of white suburban Republicans who think that life is unfair to them and their children because they worked hard to send them to a good school so their kids shouldn’t have to suffer at A&M or Tech while some poor dumb ghetto child goes to UT.</p>
<p>I like the actual answer better, which is the truth…but you can take out the dumb part out and leave the poor & ghetto in there.</p>
<p>I have to disagree with the last two posts. I don’t think its the grumbling of “whites”, to me students that posses the merit deserve to get into the school of there choice. The top ten percent rule doesn’t make sense because a student can go to a high school like Sharpstown HS in Houston and get into the top ten percent easily whereas a student who goes to SF Austin HS in Sugar Land well probably have a much harder time getting into the top ten.</p>
<p>UT also needs to change its rules regarding the summer program. I’ve seen many students who were only one or a few spots away from top ten that were forced to CAP and Iv’e seen people who were top 30% get offered the summer program.</p>
<p>Some art/music programs were also not fully met with top 10% students. </p>
<p>This ruling gives the university some flexibility. The way the trend looked, in two more years, everyone admitted would have been a texas top 10% student, and there would have been no room for anyone else.</p>
<p>I can’t agree that a person with merit should be able to get into the school of their choice. All schools; whether it’s UT Austin or Harvard has a limit on how many students they can bring into a freshman class. There’s only so many professors, so much housing, so much class rooms, etc… But I do agree that it sucks when a student busts their butt, graduates with an excellent gpa, kicks out great scores in SAT/ACT, but is denied admissions because there aren’t enough slots left. Especially if there are some students admitted for reasons of diversity, affirmative action, or economic reasons. And I can understand the economic reasons. If UT can get an out of state student for more money than a texas kid, it makes sense to do that. Just like sports programs like football bring in a lot of money. But it is a shame that some high end students don’t make the cut when less qualified kids do.</p>
<p>hahaha, that post by theloneranger is so true. If I had a dime for every time I heard someone who was rejected by UT blame the top 10% rule rather than their own academic shortcomings, I’d have more money than Warren Buffett.</p>
<p>however, to add to my last post, I don’t think that this top 10% rule modification will solve any of their problems. I think the only logical solution to UT’s “problems” with admittance is that they should simply abolish the top 10% rule altogether and forego this stupid argument that “texas public schools should be for texas residents” garbage. I believe that in order for a school to gain prestige it should be open to applications from out of state/international. Just my two cents.</p>
<p>I definitely agree with JuanEatsPandas. The Top 10 rule should be abolished and out of state students shouldn’t have to pay $12,000 more than in-state students. Especially if UT wants to bring their world ranking up from 70 to 32 where it was 3 years ago.
More out of staters, more prestige, more donations, more places a degree from UT can take a graduate.</p>
<p>No, everywhere you go out of state you pay ALOT more than the in-state kids mostly because you/they don’t contribute to the tax pool of the state of texas, which is what keeps us from having abominably higher tuition costs, the same reason that private schools cost so much more, they don’t have any state funding.
But, honestly I hope this stops the suburbans from complaining, because I went to one of those schools that apparently “take their spots at UT” because my school is a failing school despite the fact that I had great SATs and got into several other selective colleges, but no I still took some Plano West guy’s spot at UT.</p>
<p>^ I actually thought it was the other way around. Plano West had a top10% of about 90-100 people. Plano Sr had a top10% of 136 people. It’s really easy to get into the top 10% if you put any effort into it, since it’s so large.</p>
<p>But schools where the top 10% is like 10 people, it’s a lot harder. If you are #11 at that school, you might have been #70 at Plano, where you would have qualified as top10%.</p>
<p>The opposite still holds true, anybody above rank 30 at Plano sr could very well have been valedictorian at a smaller school is a random town somewhere in Texas, and gotten more scholarships and possibly more admissions at other schools. But the quality of education and number of AP exams taken might have been drastically worse, so it’s all debatable.</p>
<p>A lot of other schools don’t place as much stock in ranks and look at the application in a more holistic manner, a luxury UT can’t afford because of the 10% rule, you say that someone from Plano could easily have been the valedictorian at any other school, but you neglect the fact that some kids are exceptional at their “random town’s high school” and could very well have been valedictorian at Plano.</p>
<p>Just wondering, what was the point of the top 10% rule when it was first proposed…I think a decade ago? Did someone out there have it in for holistic review?</p>
<p>The top 10% rule was instated in response to affirmative action being outlawed in Texas in the case of Hopwood v. The State of Texas. It’s a way of bringing more minorities to Texas state universities without outright affirmative action.</p>
<p>The law exists so that everyone at UT isn’t a wealthy white suburbanite. It has been successful–UT is much closer to the state ethnically tban it ever has been.</p>
<p>I guarantee you that those Plano kids would not “easily be the valedictorian” somewhere else if they had grown up in Oak Cliff or Pleasant Grove. They would have had a completely different set of life experiences and they would have received a different education. Maybe if they move in as a junior in high school they would be better prepared, but kids from Plano aren’t inherently smarter.</p>
<p>Also, UT really does not give a crap about its national ranking. The system is designed so that Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, Yale, and MIT are at the top every year. That’s why the authors claim they know it works. UT is an entirely different sort of school and should be ranked by an entirely different set of criteria.</p>
<p>OOS residents should feel grateful that they’re even considered for openings at UT. The difference they pay in out of state tuition nowhere near makes up the difference we pay in property and sales taxes each year. I don’t think any non-Texans should be admitted unless every Texan who desires admission is admitted. OOS kids should consider themselves lucky that we deign to admit them to the state school we fund with the little tax revenue our legislature is willing to collect.</p>
<p>In addition to that, before someone goes on saying that they don’t perform, I’ll just say that it’s been documented that they do perform as well as those from “more reputable” high schools despite not having all the “perks” of living in the better off parts of Texas.</p>
<p>Hear, hear to what theloneranger said.</p>
<p>So you think it’s FAIR that a kid with no AP’s and a 2.9 GPA from Sharpstown gets in due to the top 10% rule, but a kid with maximum AP’s and a 3.4 from Plano doesn’t? Also, the Plano kid probably has at least 500 points better on the SAT, but can easily be out of the top 10% with that gpa. </p>
<p>Why would you penalize the smart kids for taking hard classes in a great school?</p>