Texas A&M: To rush or not to rush?

[clemsongirl]

Originally Posted by HQWest

Soooo... let me see if I have this right. The 250 or so Blinn Team freshmen take some or most classes at A&M but count as Blinn students. Clemson is even building dorms on campus for the their version of these students. How many of their classes do they take at the CC, and how many at the main campus?

Seems like the university is playing games with the numbers? They get to say they are staying more selective and not growing the overall size of the university by keeping within a certain range of acceptances, but then they have this waitlist of students who will go through the Blinn program in the hopes of getting into A&M next year. (Die hard Aggies one would assume.) At that point, they can replace other previously higher ranked students who transfer or drop out or fail out or if they fail out of Blinn they don't count against the university's 4 or 6 year graduation rates?

I had to look it up since I didn't know these numbers off the top of my head, but the Bridge To Clemson page says that students in this program are enrolled at Tri-County Technical College for a year and are required to complete 30 credits there before automatically being enrolled at Clemson. This phrasing makes it sound like they're not Clemson students since they take no classes at Clemson and are required to reapply for admission to Clemson if they don't meet the 30 credit requirement. In this regard I suppose Clemson's program is different from the Blinn Team program.

ETA: Found this on the Bridge Program FAQ:

Can Bridge students pledge a Clemson fraternity or sorority?
No. Due to policies governing national social fraternities and sororities, Bridge students may not join one of these organizations until after they enroll at Clemson.

I think the reason the Blinn program and others like it in the state of Texas exist is because there's state laws on the books saying that they can only accept the top X percentage of high schoolers from any high school, thus forcing still-qualified students who didn't make that percentage for whatever reason to gain acceptance through these Texas programs. I think it's a better alternative than not letting qualified applicants in to the school at all, but it probably does make their overall graduation numbers look better if they calculate them a certain way.