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

[clemsongirl]

Originally Posted by irishpipes

But the South Carolina schools don't have a 10% rule (or something similar) like Texas, do they? Clemson and USC don't have especially rigorous admissions standards, so if those transitional students were college-ready, they would have gotten in. I would think they would not be great candidates for Greek life, and may have difficulty making it through recruitment because they may be viewed as grade risks. Or, if they did get bids, the time commitment of Greek life could derail their admissions goals.

I think that some of the Bridge program students were absolutely academically ready for Clemson while others weren't. My boyfriend's younger brother got accepted to the Bridge program, and I was angry because IMO there's no reason (that I know of) that he shouldn't have been accepted to Clemson outright.

I think that if students at Clemson and USC were actually enrolled at the school, they would have a better case for being allowed to go through recruitment and placing the onus of accepting them or not on the individual chapters. Since they don't take classes at these schools during their freshman year, it's much harder to justify letting them go through recruitment at schools they're technically not matriculated at. This is the big difference between the transitional programs for students in South Carolina and the transitional programs for students in Texas.

[33girl]

Originally Posted by clemsongirl

I think that some of the Bridge program students were absolutely academically ready for Clemson while others weren't. My boyfriend's younger brother got accepted to the Bridge program, and I was angry because IMO there's no reason (that I know of) that he shouldn't have been accepted to Clemson outright.

Did it maybe have to do with what he wanted to major in? I know that was a factor getting into branch campus vs. main campus at Penn State.

[clemsongirl]

Originally Posted by 33girl

Did it maybe have to do with what he wanted to major in? I know that was a factor getting into branch campus vs. main campus at Penn State.

Hmm...it might have, and that's a point I didn't consider. He wanted to do some kind of engineering, I don't know what specifically. He was fully accepted and given scholarship money to Auburn for engineering, which I consider similarly competitive to Clemson. Ultimately he's doing a similar transfer program that will have him spend two years at the University of North Georgia, and then if he's successful he gets automatically accepted to transfer to Georgia Tech.

It seems like more schools overall are doing these transfer programs that let them "gamble", so to speak, on students they thought were qualified but not quite enough so to fully accept. Obviously that's not the case for every school, especially those constrained by state laws that limit acceptances, but I'd call it a general trend among state schools with the resources to partner with a second school nearby.