I'm going to agree with Srmom here. I think that the biggest problem with the top 10% law is that it takes away the ability of a university to choose their student body in a way to ensure not just diversity of race but diversity of interest.

I felt I was too good for my state flagship. what does that say about me?

Haha, it probably says the same thing about you that it says about me. I didn't even consider UConn undergrad.

I felt like I HAD to apply to UF, but as soon as I got my acceptance letter from my alma mater, I chucked the UF offer. It was my super duper safety.

Not commenting, just adding another piece to the puzzle of what's going on -

This is a letter to Texas high school counselors explaining why they are having to do away with the summer program.

The numbers are astounding!

http://bealonghorn.utexas.edu/docs/no.sfc.2009.pdf

Srmom, I have a question about this letter.

It says they admit 11,500 students during the summer & Fall. Is that combined enrollment, or is it 11,500 for the summer & 11,500 for the fall? That seems like a really low enrollment number, so does that not include top 10%?

I know this had been said before (i think it was in the Texas recruitment thread) but instead of doing away with the Top 10% rule, they should revise it to say that anyone who graduates from the Top 10% rule can be guaranteed admission to a public school, instead of any public school. Which means that they might not get admitted to UT (and UT can be more selective as to which & how many top 10%'ers they take) but they'll get admitted to a texas public school.

Well, that's probably what they admit every year. 11,500 x 4 = 46,000. That is a HUGE undergraduate student body, and that doesn't even include kids that take a fifth or sixth year.

ETA: just re-read that 11,500 is the number admitted, not the number that enroll. Normally they admit that many across summer and fall, but this year they admitted that many just for fall due to the top-10% law. They only have capacity for 7,200 freshmen.

As a non-Texan I have been reading this thread with interest. North Carolina doesn't have anything like this however it is always hotly debated why kids from our metro areas have to have such higher GPA's etc to get into UNC as opposed to the rest of the state. I quoted epchick's post b/c to me this would seem like the best solution. Unless you wanted to stay closer to home or had family ties to another Texas school I can't blame all the Top 10% students for picking UT. I know I sure would! But if you guarantee the student admissions and let the schools decide who they want at their institutions that seems like a more fair system. To this outsider it seems to me that the kids who are being penalized now are the kids in the metro areas. However you can't go back to the prior system b/c that seemed to penalize kids who weren't in a major metro area.

I think the kids that are getting penalized are the ones who come from academically rigorous school districts, and that is a shame. I get conflicted with this whole idea, but 1/2 of me agrees with srmom. It isn't fair that her son (who if you compare him with a top 10% student here, most likely has a higher gpa) might get the shaft and someone from the Top 10% in Bowie HS (a school here with low performance) gets the spot.

But then the other 1/2 of me is glad, because that was probably the only chance that top 10% student from Bowie gets to go to college. It is probably true that his GPA is probably closer to the 3.0 range, which isn't anywhere near Top 10% in an academically rigorous HS, but that's the reality in El Paso. You have the students that do exceptionally well (I graduated with a ~3.99 GPA--I got 1 B in my 4 years of school) and then you have the students who don't, and they might all be in the Top 10%.

It is true that a lot of students want to go to UT (I didn't, I would have preferred A&M, but I didn't apply to either) but it's obvious that soon it's not gonna happen. I don't think getting rid of the Top 10% rule is the answer, it just needs a little bit of tweaking.

So what's the scoop on grade inflation and if there are effects on this 10% rule?

Not to add more fuel to the fire but you said the Top 10% rule is the only chance kids from some schools have to go to college. Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that was their only chance to go to UT? I thought the 10% rule applied to all Texas public colleges/universities?

The Top 10% rule is a rule that every school has, and they rank the students from highest GPA to lowest GPA and thus get the Top 10% of the school. Like in my school, the Top 10% was 29 students.

IDK if this is what you mean, but AP classes greatly affect your GPA. For every Pre-AP class you take, you add 8 points to your final grade. And for every AP class you take, you add 10 points. For example, I didn't take Pre-AP Geometry or AP Chemistry, while the rest of my friends did. So it didn't matter that I maintained a grade of '100' for the entire year. My friend L, ended up with a 96 in AP Chemistry, but it became a 106 b/c of the AP points.

Somewhat, what if a school doesn't offer AP classes because it doesn't have the money or students to support it? Also I'm thinking of the "everyone gets a trophy (A) because everyone is a winner and if we don't have a bunch of winners we look bad" which we all know happens.

To answer a few questions posed above (sorry, it's long but it might clear up a few things from above):

UT offers admission to approx 11,500 students, expecting a yield (people who actually matriculate) of 7,200 (based on statistics and historical yields). UT has over 50,000 students, but they try to limit the freshman classes to 7,200 (so if you project a 4 year graduation rate, there would be 28,800 undergraduate students, but of course many take 5 to 6 years to graduate, and you have to add in graduate students, so that's how they get to the over 50,000).

The letter states that they had over 31,500 applications and will offer admission to 11,500, which is a 37% acceptance rate. The yield percentage, historically has been 63%, which they expect to increase due to the economic pressures to stay in state.

Even if there is "grade inflation" there's only so many places in the top 10% of each highschool, in my son's class there are 500 students, so 50 are top 10%.

Each school district in texas has their own grading system: some add points for AP/IB/honors classes, some don't, so it would benefit you (strictly from a rank standpoint) to never take and honors or AP class if your school doesn't "weight" AP classes; some limit the amount of AP bonus points you can get (our does this, you only can count as bonus 4 AP classes each semester), some don't, so it would benefit you to take all AP classes and no fine arts/athletics/music/theatre/etc.

Some are on 4.0 scales, some (like ours) are on a 6.0 scale - it's crazy all the variations!

The Texas Education Agency has a proposal to standardize the grading scale and standardize the bonus procedures so that you would be comparing apples to apples. But in reality, since every school and every district are different, you will never truly be able to compare apples to apples - as in the case someone asked about above - where a school does not offer any AP classes. They still are compared to schools who offere a myriad of AP classes, or IB programs (which my district does not offer).

There's no real easy solution!! Certainly not one that will satisfy all. That is why it is so hotly debated. As Epchick states above, there are two sides to this, with negative implications for students on both ends of the spectrum.

I have always been on the side proposed by posters that top 10% students would get automatic admission to A public Texas university, not their own top choice, and then let the universities base admission to their freshman classes on holistic measures.

What UT is proposing is to limit the number of auto admits to 50% of the class, so that they can offer admission to other worthy applicants who may not be top 10% Texas high school students.

Either way it would help with the conundrum that UT is finding themselves in this year, and it is only going to get worse in the coming years as the number of kids graduating each year from Texas high schools keeps growing.

Here is a quote from another board from a student that sums up the numbers for this year (he goes on to lament that he is waiting for a rejection :()

Yes, I'd say that is pretty ridiculous! And certainly won't do much to help UT become a "world class" public research university like UVA, UNC or Berkeley when their hands are tied in terms of offering admission to the most qualified and diverse students.

Is that how much they usually admit, or is that the number they have now because of the high number of top 10%. If it's just a number they use (regardless of the top 10%) I find that extremely low, especially considering that UTEP admits over 15,000 students a year.


I never knew there was such variation among school districts. I thought that all school districts in Texas run fairly similar....I guess not! lol

Yeah my school district is fairly liberal with the grades. There is no limitation to how many AP/IB (although my school doesn't offer the IB program...only one school in EP does) points you can get. So it really is to your detriment if you don't take advantage of all the pre-AP & AP classes. I thought that it would be better to get a high grade in a "regular" class than a mediocre grade in an AP class, but I was wrong and my ranking reflected that.

I think TEA should try and make all the school districts run similarly. It might take a while for students to adjust, but it might make the whole Top 10% rule a little bit more even among all students instead of having so much variation.