University of Texas Has 'Lost Control' of Admissions Policy
The president of the University of Texas says the institution has "lost control" of its admissions process and wants to amend the state law that automatically admits the top 10 percent of every high school graduating class into the UT system's flagship college, the Houston Chronicle reports.
President William Powers said 81 percent of entering freshmen are admitted through the program, which was instituted in 1998 after a federal appeals court rejected Texas's affirmative action policies for college admissions. But the 10 percent law leaves little room to admit students who do not meet that standard, Powers said: "We've lost control of our entering class because we don't have any discretion on the admissions." He suggests that the school focus its energies on transferring more students from community colleges.
Tags: college admissions | colleges | University of Texas
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What are good Junior Colleges in Austin, Texas?
Hi
Can you tell me what Junior Colleges in Austin are good schools to attend? thanks
10% rule creates brain drain in TX
Here's a concrete example illustrating the biggest problem with the 10% rule. My child attends a large HS (graduating class about 600) in a district in TX with 3 other comparably-sized high schools. This year, the district had a total of 39 National Merit Semifinalists. 30 of them attend my child's school, the remaining 9 attend 2 of the other 3 high schools in the district. Obviously, it is much easier to be one of the top 60 students at a high school with NO National Merit Semifinalists (or even only 4 or 5) than to be one of the top 60 students at a school with 30 National Merit Semifinalists.
The end result is that Texas loses many of its best and brighest students simply because they are not in the top 10% of a very competitive high school. The vast majority of the top 60 students in my child's class are headed to the Ivys, Stanford, MIT and the like. The next 15%--a highly capable group of students--are also headed out of state, to prestigious schools with admissions offices that haven't been hijacked by their state legislatures.
10% rule hurts, but not for those reasons
Just because one's SAT scores are lower etc does not mean they do not have the same potential as someone whose SAT scores are much higher. You need to take them in the context of their school. In North Carolina, there is great variation in school funding from one school district to another and even from school to school within a given district. The Charlotte Mecklenburg district is a prime example of incredibly poor resource distribution which gives this district both Myers Park High School, one of the top 50 public schools in the nation, as well as several other much poorer schools. The result of this distribution is that the wealthier Myers Park students (yes the district was conspicuously drawn to encompass the majority of the wealthy areas of Charlotte) have more resources and higher SAT scores, while the poorer districts have much worse facilities and access to resources and consequently their academic accomplishments suffer.
The 10% rule is actually decent in theory, because it is a percent, it actually DOES mean as much to be in the top 10% of a 100 person class as it does to be the top 10% of a 500 person class. I do concede, though, that the size of the top 10% being directly proportional to size of the class, and thus equal, is a rather challenging concept to grasp. Thus, it is equally impressive to be in the top 10% of students in a 500 person class as it is to be in the top 10% of a 100 person class.
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