Around here - and by extrapolation, surely just about everywhere else - often more than 10% of the seniors in large suburban high schools have a 4.0 (often above a 4.0 if AP courses are given extra weight in the GPA). And in excess of 10% also have high college entrance scores. Example:
http://blog.al.com/spotnews/2014/05/...ccept_166.html
If our state universities used a top 10% criteria, for example, many very academically strong students from these large high schools would not be admitted.
I don't know a thing about admission to Texas public universities, but having a program to buffer this reality seems like a good idea. Isn't it possible that some of the students in whatever bridge program exists have overall better academic credentials than some who were admitted to the university in question?