Rush at OU

[SWTXBelle]

Predicting college success is an inexact science, at best, which is why colleges look at grades, test scores, and other factors in making admissions decisions. The private school at which I taught had a VERY tough grading scale - so our B/C students routinely went on to be B/A students at prestigious colleges. Other schools - yes, here in the Houston area - would give students Bs for breathing. Standardized tests level the playing field somewhat, but again, nothing is 100% accurate. Males do better on the SAT, but females have higher college g.p.as. If the SAT were a totally accurate indicator of college preparedness you would expect the males to do better in college.

I hate the 10% rule for the same reason I hate curving grades - I don't think you as an individual should be penalized if you are in a class of smarties, nor should you be rewarded if your classmates are idiots.

[epchick]

Originally Posted by SWTXBelle

Predicting college success is an inexact science, at best, which is why colleges look at grades, test scores, and other factors in making admissions decisions. The private school at which I taught had a VERY tough grading scale - so our B/C students routinely went on to be B/A students at prestigious colleges. Other schools - yes, here in the Houston area - would give students Bs for breathing. Standardized tests level the playing field somewhat, but again, nothing is 100% accurate. Males do better on the SAT, but females have higher college g.p.as. If the SAT were a totally accurate indicator of college preparedness you would expect the males to do better in college.

I hate the 10% rule for the same reason I hate curving grades - I don't think you as an individual should be penalized if you are in a class of smarties, nor should you be rewarded if your classmates are idiots.

Soo true. I'm so glad that the SAT & all the AP exams were not accurate predictions of how well i'd do in college. I got an 'ok' SAT score (I should have taken it a second time) but my AP scores were horrible. I remember on the back of the AP score sheet it specifically said that the scores accurate reflect how well you'll do in college. I'll be honest, I took 3 tests, and I got two "2" and a "1" and by the AP score sheet I should have been a "C+" college student. So glad that didn't happen.

I see how the 10% rule isn't beneficial, just because the GPA range is so varied throughout the state. I just keep remembering one of my bff's who left here our sophomore year and moved to The Woodlands, TX and she eneded up doing horribly the first year there. Had she graduated from our HS, she probably would have been #2 or #3 in the class, yet her first year over there she was failing most of her classes.

[UHDEEGEE]

Originally Posted by SWTXBelle

I hate the 10% rule for the same reason I hate curving grades - I don't think you as an individual should be penalized if you are in a class of smarties, nor should you be rewarded if your classmates are idiots.

THANK YOU!!!

[UGAalum94]

Originally Posted by SWTXBelle

I hate the 10% rule for the same reason I hate curving grades - I don't think you as an individual should be penalized if you are in a class of smarties, nor should you be rewarded if your classmates are idiots.

I don't know how I'd feel about the 10% rule were it in play in my state, but one of the things that it does seem to sort of demand is that you work really hard wherever you are.

[UHDEEGEE]

Originally Posted by UGAalum94

I don't know how I'd feel about the 10% rule were it in play in my state, but one of the things that it does seem to sort of demand is that you work really hard wherever you are.

It can, but it can also bring on the "I don't stand a chance so why try" attitude if your HS is a competitive one. I know in my son's school that a flat 4.0 isn't even in the top 25%. Historically, that cut off point hovers around a 4.06 so not even every National Honor Society student makes the top quarter. If a student isn't taking at least 2 PreAP/AP courses each year they don't stand much of chance of even hitting the 4.0 mark, so many of them don't even try. Or they try to catch up and take AP courses their Junior year when college is looming on the horizon and they find that they are unprepared and fail. As a parent, if you have any choice in where you send your kids to HS, you pretty much have to decide what you want them to get.....into the Top 10% OR a good, solid base education. I remember my son's 5th grade Math teacher telling us, "If you want him to be in the top 10 then send him to XYZ for high school." We chose the other route and now it's looking like I could lose my son to a Sweet Georgia Peach (who we will love, too, if it happens)!

[UGAalum94]

Originally Posted by UHDEEGEE

It can, but it can also bring on the "I don't stand a chance so why try" attitude if your HS is a competitive one. I know in my son's school that a flat 4.0 isn't even in the top 25%. Historically, that cut off point hovers around a 4.06 so not even every National Honor Society student makes the top quarter. If a student isn't taking at least 2 PreAP/AP courses each year they don't stand much of chance of even hitting the 4.0 mark, so many of them don't even try. Or they try to catch up and take AP courses their Junior year when college is looming on the horizon and they find that they are unprepared and fail. As a parent, if you have any choice in where you send your kids to HS, you pretty much have to decide what you want them to get.....into the Top 10% OR a good, solid base education. I remember my son's 5th grade Math teacher telling us, "If you want him to be in the top 10 then send him to XYZ for high school." We chose the other route and now it's looking like I could lose my son to a Sweet Georgia Peach (who we will love, too, if it happens)!

Assuming that the role of college admission is partially to divide the benefits of college education over a diverse range of students, it makes more sense to put parents who have the resources to make the decision you faced make that decision than it does to leave poor kids without similar educational options out.

But I'm pretty sure my feelings about it would be more complicated if I had a dog in the fight.

And there's an attractive fairness from the outside of saying that your just going to guarantee admission to students across the state who make the absolute most of their academic opportunities. Top 10 percent is going to be hard to hit no matter where you are.

If there were other benefits like highly involved parents choosing to put their kids in less obviously awesome school districts, thereby spreading the wealth of high parental expectations, how could that fail to be a good thing for education in Texas too?

Sure it's easy for me to say not being in Texas.

ETA: I'll add that the thing I find weirdest about it is that it's pure GPA rather than some sort of index including test scores. But I guess if you include test scores, you put the kids who had to go to worse schools at a further disadvantage.

And while I'm sometimes not sure how I feel about fretting about diversity in college admissions, I think the Texas answer really does mean you are likely to get diversity of all sorts, rather than the racial and ethnic but little economic diversity that I think some schools get.