<p>Idk what the hell is wrong with our legislatures for even thinking about this top 10% rule. Why can't colleges make their own decision on who they can accept. I mean many people are getting screwed just because of this damn top 10% rule. I know i'm not the only one getting ****ed right now. and those damn people who cheat their way through high school get in even if they did bad on their SAT's. </p>
<p>my stats are:
class rank 61/456 (~13%) and SAT 1340/2020. and I got CAP'd</p>
<p>i have the exact same SAT score as you and about the same rank (12.4%) and I got CAPed as well.</p>
<p>For state universities, politicians are the ones controlling most of the purse strings.</p>
<p>I agree that the 10% rule may not be the best way to form a college class. It is the best way to get votes.</p>
<p>Which goal do you think the guys with control of the money are pursueing; excellence or votes?</p>
<p>Sorry you got $crewed. Life is unfair.</p>
<p>the reason for the top 10% rule is to give underprivileged students who perhaps went to a school with little prestige in high school the opportunity to attend one of the most prestigious institutions of higher learning. Perhaps they may not be the most qualified of the bunch if they graduate in the top decile of a crap school with a 3.0 GPA, but it does give many minority students, (hispanics especially) the chance to succeed in life. The system is definitely flawed, but it is trying to do a good thing!</p>
<p>I think a compromise should be set where maybe the top 5% should be automatically admitted like in the California system. idk, ideas?</p>
<p>It’s top 4% in CA.</p>
<p>Wish Texas had schools & systems like CA. 
Top 4% would be fine with me for TX.</p>
<p>Top 4% would be awesome.
I’m glad I got into McComb’s, but I’m worried for UT as a whole because the top 10% rule really takes away from the potential prestige of the school.</p>
<p>Well, not exactly.</p>
<p>In the California system, if your graduate in the 4% of you class or the top 12.5%~ of the state, then you are guaranteed a POSITION within the University of California system but not a SPECIFIC place. Don’t think you are in the top 1% and schools like Cal Berkeley will take you. If you have no ECs and did a very poor essay, they can still reject you. All the other schools, and I think up into UCSD, will auto-take 4%ers.</p>
<p>lol @ politicians.</p>
<p>Politicians fund the university and give it its authority to operate, so they have every right to decide a college’s admissions policy. It’s just like when the politicians decided to tell the university that they were no longer allowed to exclude blacks from admission solely on the basis of their race.</p>
<p>And what California does is completely irrelevant to Texas. If you start advocating something as what California does, in all honesty you’re going to turn off most Texans because most Texans don’t want to be seen as pretty-boy sissies like the image of Californians is.</p>
<p>California has a completely different system though, so you can’t compare. California is almost twice as large population-wise, so the number of kids entering college isn’t comparable to Texas. The UC system has about 6 universities that are at UT’s caliber or better, whereas Texas just has UT. The UC system is also designed to take a limited number of elite students in state law, with the CSU system and the community college system getting the rest. Texas doesn’t have this designation in law.</p>
<p>The major problem with the top ten law is that, rather than grow with the state’s larger population, UT has chosen to CONTRACT and get smaller. We’re down to 47k, from a high of over 51k. If they hadn’t made this decision, the problem wouldn’t be as acute as it is now.</p>
<p>Sorry theloneranger - Texas has 3 tier 1 schools, 2 public:UT & A&M, 1 Private:Rice
Until Texas politicians bring up Tech, UNT, UTA, UT Dallas, UTEP, UH up to the tier 1 level, we will continue to loose good students to out of state universities. California has 9 Tier 1 Universities. New York has 7 Tier 1 Universities. With California having 36Million people and Texas having 23.5 million and New York having 19.2Million- we are way behind.</p>
<p>I was looking at that top 10% report on UTs site and grades from those automatically accepted from the top 10% had a higher retention rate than those accepted not from the top10%…</p>
<p>klparker, regardless of whatever arbitrary definition is being used to definie “tier 1” university, the entire state has only one public university of a similar caliber to the UC system, and that is UT. TAMU is a fine institution but is simply not similar in academic calibre to most of the UC system. Rice is a private university and is therefore irrelevant in this discussion, as it determines its own policies independently of the state and receives no public funding.</p>
<p>Republican politicians in Texas will not bring any schools up to the calibre of even TAMU because they do not want to raise the taxes necessary for high-quality schools (or even high-quality government) to function. Until they choose to fund the schools, there won’t be any improvements in quality made. Even if they do start funding them at an appropriate rate, it will take many, many years for a school to reach even the quality of TAMU, and for it to be equal in prestige as well to be attractive to top-ten kids will take even more time.</p>
<p>Educatemeplease, you’re absolutely right. Top ten admits do get better grades than non-top-ten admits. Generally, this is because these kids are hard workers. They worked hard in high school, and even if the work is harder they are going to work hard in college. Regardless of what admissions statistics seem to prove (or are manipulated to prove), the fact is that Top Ten students, regardless of where they’re from, consistently outperform non-top ten students at UT.</p>
<p>If the legislature would change the charter of the permanent fund (recipient of Texas oil taxes) to channel that money to the whole Texas education system rather then just UT-Austin, then the other schools would have the money to come up to speed. </p>
<p>But wouldn’t the UT alumni howl!!!.</p>
<p>Actually the PUF is 2/3 for UT and 1/3 for TAMU IIRC. It’s doesn’t ALL go to us…</p>
<p>But actually that would have the opposite effect…Texas would go from having one stellar school, one very good schools, and a bunch of ok schools to having perhaps three or four very good schools and a bunch of ok schools.</p>
<p>Texas losing funding would mean that it won’t be as great of a school as it is, and it will take a whole lot to make any other school a top tier institution–it really can’t be done just with the PUF anyways, because the oil returns are dwindling and UT is increasingly relying on outside donations to begin with. If you start pumping the money into a school that’s got nothing rather than a lot like UT has, it won’t manage to make the other school any better.</p>
<p>The only people with the $$ to make a difference is the Legislature, and they don’t want to raise the money.</p>
<p>To fill in a little for those who don’t know: The top 10% rule resulted from a court decision (Hopwood vs Texas) that ordered the UT system to no longer use minority preferences in admissions. (The decision came out of the law school, but applied to all state schools.) The legislature wanted to continue to strive for diversity in state schools, so they devised the rule in response. Yes, it’s imperfect and could well change. And, yes, the ultimate solution is for this huge state to have more top-flight schools.</p>
<p>theloneranger, are you kidding me? are you so dim that you think that politicians wouldn’t adopt the california top 4% automatic admittance because they would be seen as “pretty boy sissies”?</p>
<p>theloneranger - we are going to have to agree to disagree on UT being Texas’ only top caliber school.<br>
And TAMU has not relied on the oil moneys the way UT has - it is growing and building at a massive pace.</p>
<p>loneranger, it’s not the politicians that funds our schools, it’s our parents and the taxpayers of the great state of Texas that does. Politicians are there to suck up to Rick Perry and other idiots so they can have TAKS and TAAS and make themselves look good. So, in the liberal democracy we’re in (or whatever is left of it), WE decide the school policies, just as WE decide who to represent us and manage our money (that kinda failed).</p>
<p>What California does is just as relevant. We have a policy that works, you have a policy that fails, and running around like headless chickens trying to do something. The fact that each state has its own policies is a blessing, since all it means is each state is a laboratory of a series of new policies. Social security, for example, was around in the more progressive states at the turn of the century before FDR moved in and established a national one.</p>
<p>Oh and thanks, this comment of yours is why you Texans are the butt of cruel jokes across the country and even into Europe. We “pretty-boy sissies” helped ended Bush, and you guys helped Palin look good.</p>
<p>Having all that oil money is great to fund all the education of the state of Texas, and expanding on Green technology would sure pick up on the bill.</p>
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<p>Really, this is what you stoop too. You should focus more on rational arguements rather than insulting people. </p>
<p>P.S. If you didn’t know Texas people don’t give a d-a-m-n about what other states let along Europe think. There is a reason we stay in Texas, and trust us it is not because we don’t have options. </p>
<p>P.P.S. Oh and if the second largest economy in the entire country is “the butt of jokes” then obviously those joking are just ignorant.</p>
<p>For someone who is asking me to use rational arguments, why don’t you try reading my post and his post a bit before responding, and think “rationally.”</p>
<p>I read his post as “Texans apparently think Californians are nothing more than pretty-boy sissies” and I responded to that, if you didn’t like what I said then that’s just what it sounded like, get the idea?</p>
<p>I’ve pointed out that you have a policy that fails and given we live in a country that state laws are like experiments, and it doesn’t hurt one bit that you would look at others and evaluate.</p>
<p>Got anything else to contribute besides picking my post apart and try to BAWWWWW about it? No? Good.</p>
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<p>To add a bit, UCSB (as an example) has a much less income than UT Austin, but has made itself quite a huge researching power. I was thinking along the lines of investing in the Southwestern corridor of this country for wind power. This will give the school quite the boost along with brownie points with donations.</p>
<p>Estate taxes would do, but asking the federal government back more of the state’s money would do fine as well. Just my 2 cent.</p>