Can people shed some light on how admission committees evaluate students from different high schools: as parent of a student who attends a Top Public school (ranked consistently in the Top 10 for the last 10 years) in the country with a graduating class of around 60?
Many of the top undergrad programs in the country boast that their entering freshmen is in the Top 2% of their graduating class - such as UT BHP!
How do they compare ranks across schools? Would common exams such as AP scores, SAT, ACT, SAT Subject test etc. be used to compare students across schools?
Read somewhere that they compare to your topper from that school? How will they know the GPA of the top student if that person is not applying to that school? does the counselor provide that?
After reading UT BHP admissions, I feel, going to a top school with a small class size ultimately penalizes the student. based on TX admission requirements, if you have to take 6% of the graduating class, if you are Not the top student in a small school (does not matter if it is one of the top 3 schools in the state), you will be penalized based on their criteria (they only take the top student from the school that has a small class size)
When comparing the AP scores of the top students in a regular school vs. top school with small class size, I have found that around 20-25% of the class in the top school are comparable to the Top 2-5% of a regular school!
After going through the admission process this year, I will share my experience o that other parents who send their children to top public/magnet/charter schools will be forewarned and make better choices! In fact, few of the parents here in TX have taken their kids from a very good charter school to the local public school after the sophomore year so that they can be in the top 6% and it paid off for them!
Hi monofseniro1 - what UT Austin policy is - if the 6% is less than 1 student - then they will take the Top Student as the Auto Admit Student.
So if you go to a top school, magnet/public/charter - say with 50 students in the graduating class - you have to be in the Top 3 to be admitted in Auto Admit and if you apply to some of the top programs as UT BHP, Plan II Honors etc. - you have to be Top 2% - meaning your chances are Much Greater going to a public school with 600 students and and if you are one of the top 12 students in the graduating class, you can most likely get in to one of these programs.
Top 6% penalizes Top Schools (Magnet/Charter) which tend to have smaller classes - I wish they will compare common tests that these kids take to compare them - such as AP or IB classes, SAT, ACT, SAT Subject Tests. Many of these schools, top 30% is better or equal to top 1-2% of a regular high school.
In many countries around the world, they have final testing in the final year common test with the grading done by unknown people (only a number of the student is provided - no names) and also, an entrance exam that is extremely difficult is also part of the admission system.
Top 6% from every school is NOT a merit based system - about time we give Merit its due place in admissions! OR, at least have additional grading that are common say SAT subjects etc. to compare students.
I was referring to colleges in general, not just in TX, but I agree that the TX system needs tweaking!
FWIW, I would argue that that your high achieving child in your more competitive high school is going to have a better outcome overall in college as they will be more prepared. They just may not land where you hoped if you were banking on UT Austin.
There are lots of small schools in TX that the auto admits wouldn’t get in otherwise. The problem with the statement make it merit based is that it is easy to say and impossible to do. Merit for college admission is a fuzzy attribute at best.
should have said more merit based! how about comparing kids in common tests - that should give you an idea of normalizing student grades. If a 4.0 student in a schools get a 3 or 4 in all APs or 1300 in SAT or 650 in SAT subject --let us compare that to another student who has 3.8 GPA but has higher scores in these common tests. There are multiple was to reduce the bias - but is there a political will to do it?
Throw away lines like merit based admission is a cop out! Other countries are doing that is why most of the top students in Grad school are kids from China, India, Korea! They do NOT have these fuzzy ways to admit kids or even Germany for that matter!
Understand that top kids from poorer neighborhoods should get the opportunity to attend these schools but you do NOT have to give 6% auto admits if they those school students do Not have comparable scores in common tests. There are many ways to reduce the inequity - just look at what they did for Auto admit for small classes? why Not use similar criterion for some schools who have not proven that their top kids are in any way comparable to top 6% of top high schools?