Rush at OU

[UGAalum94]

But being well-qualified is sort of its own regard as long as you can get into a decent school someplace. So while the middle or even the bottom at some schools are certainly better prepared academically than the top kids at another, it's not the complete academic kiss of death to be in the 11th percentile at a really great school.

If college admission is some sort of PC spoils system, and it seems to be used this way, at least the 10% systems is objective and clear. When diversity is weigh more ambiguously with other factors, kids are at the complete mercy of admissions officials. In Texas, you've at least got a pretty clear picture of what your chances are based on your class rank.

[SWTXBelle]

Originally Posted by UGAalum94

But being well-qualified is sort of its own regard as long as you can get into a decent school someplace. So while the middle or even the bottom at some schools are certainly better prepared academically than the top kids at another, it's not the complete academic kiss of death to be in the 11th percentile at a really great school. But it is -if you want to go to UT or A&M. The problem is that the top 10% rule pits a student against other students at only their school, instead of against all of the other applicants from all the other schools. So the better-prepared student won't get in if he/she isn't in the top 10% at his/her school.

If college admission is some sort of PC spoils system, and it seems to be used this way,(Maybe it is - but I'd argue it shouldn't be.) at least the 10% systems is objective and clear. When diversity is weigh more ambiguously with other factors, kids are at the complete mercy of admissions officials. In Texas, you've at least got a pretty clear picture of what your chances are based on your class rank.

It's true - you'll know you are totally screwed based on your class rank, and not on something like whether or not you are the more qualified!

[UGAalum94]

Originally Posted by SWTXBelle

It's true - you'll know you are totally screwed based on your class rank, and not on something like whether or not you are the more qualified!

But diversity standards mean no one ever objectively knows who is more qualified. Your qualifications may be that you have a 4.0 and a 1600 but you're white and suburban with college educated parents. My qualification may be that I have a 3.5 and a 1300 and play the oboe and am part Navajo (not really) and will be the first in my family to go to college. Valuing diversity may mean we're not playing simply by the grades and test score rules.

I'm not sure I agree with this thinking either, but there's something to be said for a system that at the very least says, if you are in the top 10% we're going to let you go where you want to, as opposed to a system that says, like most of the top ranked highly selective private schools seem to, apply: we'll decide if you are good enough. Attempt to be perfect in every area and we'll decide whether you fit in this year's class or not.

[SWTXBelle]

But one problem that has reared its ugly head is that you are not doing the top 10% any favours if you let them go and they are NOT prepared. Then they can't cope - and end up flunking out. Their professors don't know - and don't care - from whence they graduated. As admitted freshmen, they have to be able to pull their weight. I know that some schools have had a problem with sending their top 10% off, and then they don't do well. Those students would be MUCH better served going to a community college or a smaller college where they can get up to speed and get the kind of personalized attention they cannot get at UT or A&M. It's sink or swim - and if they aren't prepared, no matter how well-intentioned their admission was, you risk sinking the very students you most want to enable to succeed.

eta - the program has been in place for some time - does anyone know of any other states that have adopted it?

[UGAalum94]

Originally Posted by SWTXBelle

But one problem that has reared its ugly head is that you are not doing the top 10% any favours if you let them go and they are NOT prepared. Then they can't cope - and end up flunking out. Their professors don't know - and don't care - from whence they graduated. As admitted freshmen, they have to be able to pull their weight. I know that some schools have had a problem with sending their top 10% off, and then they don't do well. Those students would be MUCH better served going to a community college or a smaller college where they can get up to speed and get the kind of personalized attention they cannot get at UT or A&M. It's sink or swim - and if they aren't prepared, no matter how well-intentioned their admission was, you risk sinking the very students you most want to enable to succeed.

I think this is true in any admission system.

I don't know of any other states that adopted the 10% deal, but I think most are just trying to do their own little diversity dance and weren't under the same legal pressure.

I wonder how much having the idea out there that UT and A&M are so hard to get into sort of creates the idea that if you are top 10% you HAVE to go there. Anybody know how many of the top 10% of the graduating classes at really good high schools used to choose UT or A&M?

[SWTXBelle]

Well, the idea should be to reduce the number who are not prepared - to have admissions standards that do all they can to insure that those who are admitted are indeed prepared. The top 10% system doesn't even pretend to do that.

eta - the top 10% system seems to be a variation of throw it on the wall and see what sticks. I don't think it serves the students' best interests, and I don't think it is in the best interest of the university.

[UGAalum94]

Originally Posted by SWTXBelle

Well, the idea should be to reduce the number who are not prepared - to have admissions standards that do all they can to insure that those who are admitted are indeed prepared. The top 10% system doesn't even pretend to do that.

eta - the top 10% system seems to be a variation of throw it on the wall and see what sticks. I don't think it serves the students' best interests, and I don't think it is in the best interest of the university.

You may be right, but I think schools have sort of given up trying to tell who is most objectively qualified, and since way more kids than they could possibly admit probably meet whatever predictive standard they use to determine who might flunk out, they just need a system to reduce the total number.

I understand what you are saying though. It seems that colleges could make much better decisions about the preparation and qualification of the students they accept.

I may have mentioned this before since it's one of my pet peeves. Every so often in Georgia the colleges, especially the less selective ones, want to give the high schools grief about the number of kids with who need remedial classes. What is so irritating about it is that anyone with even a passing familiarity with high schools in Georgia could tell you that a B average from certain schools means absolutely nothing in terms of academic preparation. Because we have the HOPE grant which gives a full tuition scholarship to any kid who graduates from a Georgia public high school with a B average, as long as the kid maintains the B average in college, at some high schools a B is almost the default grade. However, there's no way that kids at some of those schools are really doing B level college preparatory work. So, from a high school perspective, you just want to respond to the complaining about the lack of preparation with, "yeah, you admitted that kid with the data about how other kids from that high school fared in your program; how can you possibly try to blame the high schools generally for your failure to make tough admissions decisions?"

ETA: sorry for the craziness of some of my sentences. I'm kind of tired. I'll look at it tomorrow and see what I can do.

[breathesgelatin]

Originally Posted by SWTXBelle

But one problem that has reared its ugly head is that you are not doing the top 10% any favours if you let them go and they are NOT prepared. Then they can't cope - and end up flunking out. Their professors don't know - and don't care - from whence they graduated. As admitted freshmen, they have to be able to pull their weight. I know that some schools have had a problem with sending their top 10% off, and then they don't do well. Those students would be MUCH better served going to a community college or a smaller college where they can get up to speed and get the kind of personalized attention they cannot get at UT or A&M. It's sink or swim - and if they aren't prepared, no matter how well-intentioned their admission was, you risk sinking the very students you most want to enable to succeed.

eta - the program has been in place for some time - does anyone know of any other states that have adopted it?

Speaking as an instructor at UT, I don't really see any evidence that students admitted under the top 10% rule are struggling at UT.

[SWTXBelle]

Do you teach many freshman classes? If not, I would guess that they are gone before they reach you. How many of your students drop per semester? It may be those who feel overwhelmed simply drop before you have much interaction with them. Or all of your students come to school totally prepared - which is great.

My comment was based on observations from friends (teachers) at other high schools, several students I know, and a series of articles. I know that when we tracked students who attended the community college at which I sometimes teach then transferred we discovered that they had higher g.p.a.s than those who had gone straight to a 4 year school. I'd say we pull from a mix of schools - but the majority are not high-performing schools.

I do think that someone should do an actual review of the students from a variety of schools to see how many of those who go to UT and A&M actually graduate. We track graduation rates for athletes - if we are going to discuss the 10% it would be nice to have statistics to help inform the discussion.

[breathesgelatin]

Originally Posted by SWTXBelle

Do you teach many freshman classes? If not, I would guess that they are gone before they reach you. How many of your students drop per semester? It may be those who feel overwhelmed simply drop before you have much interaction with them. Or all of your students come to school totally prepared - which is great.

My comment was based on observations from friends (teachers) at other high schools, several students I know, and a series of articles. I know that when we tracked students who attended the community college at which I sometimes teach then transferred we discovered that they had higher g.p.a.s than those who had gone straight to a 4 year school. I'd say we pull from a mix of schools - but the majority are not high-performing schools.

I do think that someone should do an actual review of the students from a variety of schools to see how many of those who go to UT and A&M actually graduate. We track graduation rates for athletes - if we are going to discuss the 10% it would be nice to have statistics to help inform the discussion.

I have taught freshmen classes about half the time. Some of my friends have taught almost all freshmen classes. My boyfriend taught the intro writing course last year, which is essentially a remedial course, although the department says it isn't - but most students from prestigious high schools will be able to get out of this course, leaving some of the weaker admitted students plus nontraditional adult students and international students as the majority in these sections. Obviously this isn't statistical (and I'm not sure how easily we could really measure this - we could track students admitted under the top 10% rule, but that's almost everybody from Texas. And I doubt UT would track "students admitted by the top 10% rule from sh*tty high schools" or whatever rubric we'd need to actually figure it out.)

Like I said, the kids I get who are flunking out often seem to be A) Greek and drinking too much B) from the major cities, just like everybody else C) really homesick/having emotional/family problems and not going to class. I did have ONE student admitted under the top 10% rule, ONCE, who I felt maybe should not have been admitted to UT. She admitted that she was struggling a lot but she worked really really really really really hard with me and came to office hours every week to improve. Unlike my entitled kids from Dallas and Austin who slack off and then protest their grades at the end of the term and tell me their dads are lawyers, in ominous tones.

In my boyfriend's experience teaching freshmen writing, I should add, the adult students (whose HS credits have "expired" or are not applicable or whatever) usually do the best in the intro writing classes, followed by kids from rural high schools. The kids who usually fail are girls from Dallas/Fort Worth who come into his office hours and cry because they've never really been forced to do their own work before and skated by as student council president or head cheerleader or whatever. And the guys who go Greek. The international students try really hard but often are still working to overcome the language barrier, and end up somewhere in the middle.

I truly, honestly, wish I was exaggerating but I'm not. I think the rich kids screw up more often than the rural kids or inner city kids because the latter two groups are trying to prove themselves and improve their stations in life.

That said, I honestly don't find UT's undergrad courses to be particularly rigorous. In the freshmen courses especially, the difficulty is nonexistent (well, I do think intro writing is harder than American history intro), particularly compared to my freshmen courses at W&L, where I was probably assigned 3-4 times the amount of work assigned to my students. If you're really struggling in a freshmen course at UT, you're just not trying at all. I honestly feel that anyone who graduates in the top 10% could handle it if they tried (and I went to a small, crappy, rural high school myself, where I was valedictorian, and wasn't too impressed by all of the kids in the top 10%, honestly). I really think that most students' struggles - ESPECIALLY with intro courses - is due to emotional/personal problems or partying way too much. At W&L I didn't feel that way. I felt some students couldn't handle even intro courses because there was so much difficulty. I don't think UT students have much excuse.

Disclaimer: not that I think UT is a bad school. It's an awesome school and probably a jillion times more rigorous than most state schools. But it doesn't compare to someplace like W&L.