<p>@2018RiceParent I’m not sure if it actually hurts people. I went to a school that definitely seems to command the respect of a “top public school” since it’s got the highest ranking (USNWR and Newsweek) in the area; its best days are well behind it (it used to be Top 100 for several years) but it outperforms the nation, state, and other public schools in the area by a significant margin- i.e., people move so they can go to this school.</p>
<p>It looks like UT knows this and doesn’t penalize low GPAs as much. So does A&M. We had 585 students go to college this year- 81 to UT-Austin and 59 to A&M College Station. We had some good representation in other state flagships as well- mostly in the South but a few in UCLA as well.</p>
<p>Assuming an average yield rate (which I’d say is an overestimate), that means 29.3% (172 people) got into UT and 20.1% (117 people) got into A&M. Even if you just look at the people who opted to attend, it’s well beyond 10% (and most people in the top 10% chose other places over UT and A&M, although it looks like A&M’s National Merit money and that Italy trip certainly tempted a bunch of people).</p>
<p>Anecdotally, I know some people who got in with sub-par GPAs (and in one case, this guy got into Cockrell PetroE with a really low test score for our school). A lot of my friends outside the top 10% made it into McCombs and Cockrell, although Plan II and other Honors programs didn’t seem to be as welcoming to them. Maybe it’s because we’re a traditional UT feeder (1% of their incoming class is us) and have a strong UT/A&M community- or because we have strong emphasis on getting into college and are supplied information through our counselors and encouraged by teachers.</p>
<p>So I doubt that choosing a better high school education hurts someone’s chances of getting into UT/A&M- and I bet colleges look at the School Profile and understand that rigor varies between schools without the aid of a test score. In any case, I hope no one chooses a weaker high school so they can get a higher GPA- education matters, especially when you’re building your fundamentals; mislearning Pre-Cal might boost someone’s GPA but it’s not going to help when they actually use that math in college.</p>