Rush at OU

[UHDEEGEE]

Sorry, I would have responded to the questions re: the Texas Top 10% law but we left for a family outing. Breathesgelatin answered much better than I could have, though.

BG, you are correct in that my son can get into out of state universities that are ranked higher nationally than both UT & A&M and also that we have been blessed to be able to afford tuition at a private university. But, when you are a native Texan (btw, UT is NOT our family tradition) who wants to attend one of the 2 state flagship universities and are basically penalized for attending a "prestigious" high school, than there is something wrong with the system. Perhaps the mandatory auto-admits should be the top 3% instead of 10%? Or cap the percentage of freshmen admitted under the current top 10%? I simply feel that this law will hurt our state in the long run by forcing some of our best & brightest young men & women to look outside of Texas for college....and in turn accept jobs outside of Texas as well.

OU is one of the universities that my son will be applying to next year, which is why the OP's thread caught my eye; I didn't mean to highjack. Ladybugmom, I wish your daughter the best of luck at OU recruitment!

[epchick]

Originally Posted by UHDEEGEE

I simply feel that this law will hurt our state in the long run by forcing some of our best & brightest young men & women to look outside of Texas for college.

I'm sorry if I sound snarky or whatever, but this really rubs me the wrong way. I'm not from a prestigious school, a well performing school. Shoot i'm from the city that is one of the poorest in the nation. But it sounds like your saying, is screw the poor kids. Screw the kids who work hard to get good grades (but not good enough to match up the kids in Dallas/Houston/Austin area) they aren't the 'best and the brightest.' Let them suffer at a not so stellar school.

It is true that our top 10% wouldn't match up the top 10% of a "prestigious" school in Houston or Dallas. But this rule is what gives us hope that we can actually go a good college, and not have to settle for a community college. I know that when I was in HS, our rival school's valedictorian's GPA was a 'B.' If the top 10% rule wasn't in place, I highly doubt she would have been attending UT (which she did, and she excelled there).

Your 'best and brightest' students probably have soo many more opportunities than any of our 'best and brightest' (and not to toot my own horn, but i'd consider myself one of my area's best & brightest). Your 'best and brightest' can probably afford to attend any of those opportunities. Ours can't.

It sucks that UT and A&M are overgrown with too many students. That's not the students fault. I think it's the Texas Gov't fault. They decide to give the bulk of the funds to UT & A&M, instead of all the rest of the schools. If they decided to give more money to the other public schools to help bring up academics & such then maybe more students would be willing to give other schools a chance.

[UHDEEGEE]

Originally Posted by epchick

I'm not from a prestigious school, a well performing school.

Neither was I, as a matter of fact, HISD tried very hard to close my old high school this year due to it's "lack of performance". However, I worked very hard in high school to make a 4.0, graduate #1 in my class of 625 and receive a full scholarship to my college of choice........all WITHOUT a law that said they had to take me just becuase I was in the top 10% of my class.

Prestige has nothing to do with it; merit does. A 4.0 is higher than a 3.0. It's my opinion, that those students with the higher GPA and/or test scores should be the ones accepted first, no matter where they go to high school. In other words, a student with a 4.0 from your high school should be admitted before my own son with a 3.85 from a "prestigious" high school; however, my son with a 3.85 should be admitted before your rival school's valedictorian with a "B".

[epchick]

Originally Posted by UHDEEGEE

Neither was I, as a matter of fact, HISD tried very hard to close my old high school this year due to it's "lack of performance". However, I worked very hard in high school to make a 4.0, graduate #1 in my class of 625 and receive a full scholarship to my college of choice........all WITHOUT a law that said they had to take me just becuase I was in the top 10% of my class.

Prestige has nothing to do with it; merit does. A 4.0 is higher than a 3.0. It's my opinion, that those students with the higher GPA and/or test scores should be the ones accepted first, no matter where they go to high school. In other words, a student with a 4.0 from your high school should be admitted before my own son with a 3.85 from a "prestigious" high school; however, my son with a 3.85 should be admitted before your rival school's valedictorian with a "B".

Awesome, congrats to you. I'm glad you could do it without the 10% law, but not everyone gets a 4.0 or graduates #1. Someone can work EXTREMELY hard in school, and still get a B/C average. Why should colleges only accept the students with the highest grades? They don't all succeed in college, shoot they don't all graduate. I was like #6 or #7 in school, and I'm the 3rd to graduate from college. All the rest dropped out, or went back to a community college.

And let's be honest, since you say your son is from a "prestigious" HS, he'd be admitted to UT waaaaaaay before anyone from my city would, regardless of GPA.

ETA: I know you said that you didn't go to a 'prestigious' HS, but seeing as you are in Houston, I would assume you all had adequate funding. My High School didn't have enough supplies to go around. When I was in geometry, for a class of 30, we had to share 2 protractors. We didn't have enough calculators to go around, and teachers would give extra credit if you gave them printer paper for the class computers.

[UHDEEGEE]

[quote=epchick;1747981]And let's be honest, since you say your son is from a "prestigious" HS, he'd be admitted to UT waaaaaaay before anyone from my city would, regardless of GPA.[quote]

No, he won't because he is not in the top 10% of his class. We've already been to an admission session & spoken to a counselor and UT will max out it's freshman class with top ten's by the time my son starts college.

[quote]ETA: I know you said that you didn't go to a 'prestigious' HS, but seeing as you are in Houston, I would assume you all had adequate funding. My High School didn't have enough supplies to go around. When I was in geometry, for a class of 30, we had to share 2 protractors. We didn't have enough calculators to go around, and teachers would give extra credit if you gave them printer paper for the class computers./[QUOTE]

Actually, when I was in school, we had to provide our own supplies....the district supplied nothing. HISD is big and it's not what I would consider a wealthy school district. I'm guessing that some of the differences between your high school experiences and mine, though, are due more to age....I believe I've got a few years on ya.

[cbm]

Originally Posted by epchick

Awesome, congrats to you. I'm glad you could do it without the 10% law, but not everyone gets a 4.0 or graduates #1. Someone can work EXTREMELY hard in school, and still get a B/C average. Why should colleges only accept the students with the highest grades? They don't all succeed in college, shoot they don't all graduate. I was like #6 or #7 in school, and I'm the 3rd to graduate from college. All the rest dropped out, or went back to a community college.

And let's be honest, since you say your son is from a "prestigious" HS, he'd be admitted to UT waaaaaaay before anyone from my city would, regardless of GPA.

ETA: I know you said that you didn't go to a 'prestigious' HS, but seeing as you are in Houston, I would assume you all had adequate funding. My High School didn't have enough supplies to go around. When I was in geometry, for a class of 30, we had to share 2 protractors. We didn't have enough calculators to go around, and teachers would give extra credit if you gave them printer paper for the class computers.

If a student is working "extremely hard" in high school and can't cut a B/C average, they most likely aren't going to be able to handle getting a decent GPA at a competitive university.

[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)!

[gee_ess]

Wow, great explanation, breathesgelatin. As a person who has several friends in Texas with college-age kids (or soon to be so) this really does shed some light on the situation. I knew of the rule, but not why it was imposed.

I am not sure I understand your proposal regarding admissons. Did you mean that the top 10% should be automatically admitted to any university in Texas instead of just UT?

Thanks again for explaining that so well!

[breathesgelatin]

Originally Posted by UHDEEGEE

BG, you are correct in that my son can get into out of state universities that are ranked higher nationally than both UT & A&M and also that we have been blessed to be able to afford tuition at a private university. But, when you are a native Texan (btw, UT is NOT our family tradition) who wants to attend one of the 2 state flagship universities and are basically penalized for attending a "prestigious" high school, than there is something wrong with the system. Perhaps the mandatory auto-admits should be the top 3% instead of 10%? Or cap the percentage of freshmen admitted under the current top 10%? I simply feel that this law will hurt our state in the long run by forcing some of our best & brightest young men & women to look outside of Texas for college....and in turn accept jobs outside of Texas as well.

Yes, I do agree that it's rather counterintuitive. That's part of the problem with instilling absolutely hardline "objective" standards, is that they're never really objective and someone is going to get screwed/overlooked. For example if they based it on a minimum SAT or something, there would still be issues.

There was a house bill (HB 78 (80R)) in 2007 which proposed capping the number of students admitted under the top 10% rule to 40% of admitted students. UT was strongly in favor of the proposal. It did not pass - it stalled in committee. The top 10% rule is rather popular with the legislature. They can point to an "objective standard," they can say we're not using affirmative action but still guaranteeing diversity, and for the legislators from the non-prestigious school districts it's obviously more popular with their constituents.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_House_Bill_588

That link gives more info on some of the proposals. Doing a top 7% rule has also been proposed. But with population growth, wouldn't that eventually become a problem too?

Originally Posted by gee_ess

I am not sure I understand your proposal regarding admissons. Did you mean that the top 10% should be automatically admitted to any university in Texas instead of just UT?

Yes, that's what I meant. Well, only including state schools. The legislature obviously has no control over what TCU, SMU, or Rice do, for example. But it does make inherent sense to me that someone who graduates in the top 10% of their class ought to be admitted to some state university in Texas. But why must we guarantee it's one of the 2-3 flagship schools? Frankly, most of the burden and flak surrounding the top 10% rule falls on UT and to a lesser degree A&M. You know?

Sorry for derailing the thread.

[UHDEEGEE]

Yes, it is a mandatory, auto-admit for any public university in Texas. UT has been the most affected. Our UT admissions counselor told us that 83% of the current freshman class is from the Top 10% law.

[breathesgelatin]

Originally Posted by UHDEEGEE

Yes, it is a mandatory, auto-admit for any public university in Texas. UT has been the most affected. Our UT admissions counselor told us that 83% of the current freshman class is from the Top 10% law.

Yes, and when you furthermore consider that in 2007-2008 the student body was 10% out of state and 9.1% international students, it puts that 83% and just how few other spaces are left into perspective even more.

Now, I think those numbers (10% and 9.1%) include graduate students, most of whom are probably out of state, but you still get the idea.

PDF with some of the breakdowns for interested parties:

http://www.utexas.edu/academic/oir/s...08students.pdf