yes! We went over Spring Break and had a tour/info session for Mays. We will plan to go again during a time a when it’s not a break to get the full experience!
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Yes he will be doing ACT as well.
@Bb49 with your student being an auto admit will they apply with scores or do TO?
I think she’s still undecided about it. She took the ACT a second time a couple of weekends ago so waiting to see on those. I’ve already learned for my younger two to have them start test prepping/studying earlier!
Does anyone think (or have you heard rumors) that TAMU will go back to test required this cycle? Following the recent bunch of schools such as UT and Yale that have done this? Just curious. I think TO really skews the data for average scores.
Ready to jump in to the application cycle with my second kid! After fall semester he was literally ONE KID shy of top 10%, I’m crossing fingers that his straight As in all weighted classes pushes him up this semester but at his school there’s no telling. He’ll have a 4.6 GPA. He did just get his SAT back at a 1490 so we’re excited about that too. Applying for Chemical Engineering.
What kind of stats are needed for the few scholarships available? I know they don’t give much, but anything would help.
If he applies in August with that GPA/rank (current outside top 10%) and score, he’ll have no issue being accepted to main campus engineering assuming engineering course rigor is there for math!
As for scholarships.. I have no idea, but tamu doesn’t have many and I don’t think that score will secure him money (even tho that’s a great score).
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I would be shocked if he doesn’t get into A&M, and he will likely have other great options as well.
Tests are VERY important because colleges use homeschooled students’ tests scores to rank them in the Top Ten % for auto admit thanks to HB 3993 that was passed last year!
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Oh yeah, tippy top rigor in science and math. AP Physics and Chem, AP Calc BC and Stats. He’s considering taking the SAT again to aim for over 1500 to help with merit aid and also maybe getting into that other school with all the orange 
Biggest downside for him at TAMU is no marching band without the corps.
Not sure why, but i’m literally laughing out loud at “tippy top rigor”…
That would be a downside for sure if that’s his goal to play at this level but not be in the corps. So many great schools with amazing marching bands tho! Even that orange school.
@sbhubbell how did he do on PSAT? Any chance he could be NMS/F or Commended? That’s pretty much the only way to get incoming merit scholarships, at least President’s Endowed; MAYBE Lechner or McFadden (one of those is Dallas County specific).
I do feel certain he’ll get admitted to General engineering tho, with his rigor and SAT.
It doesn’t march, but the Hullabaloo Band is super fun! They play at all basketball games.
ACT scores came back today and she increased her score to 30. Superscore is 31 but if I remember correctly TAMU doesn’t superscore.
Speaking of test scores…
Last month my kid was invited to a day trip to A&M and those invited had to meet the following criteria:
A current high school junior in the Top 10% of their class; or
A current high school junior in the Top 25% of their class with a minimum SAT score of 1360 or composite ACT score of 30.
Not sure of the significance of 1360/30 as it relates to actual acceptance rates but thought it was interesting that they included test scores in the criteria.
@Bb49 is she at a Title 1 or identified Century Scholar school?
A&M doesn’t super score.
Nope, neither of those. One of the highest rating districts in the area. It wasn’t a personal invite but one of those “Aggie for a day trips” by the regional office that was likely emailed to all the Juniors on their email list who met either of those criteria. She didn’t end up going since the logistics didn’t work out.
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Up until a few years ago (3 or 4?) students could automatically be admitted if they were top 25% and had a test score of 1360/30 or better, called academic admit. This was in addition to auto admits of top 10%. Academic admits was discontinued since the number of academic and auto admits was quickly approaching the total number of desired freshmen, leaving no opportunity for the truly holistic students.
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Mays Honors has gotten VERY competitive. Have a friend who has a kid who is BH and has a lot of insight into how it is selected. The level of candidates they have applying are increasingly strong. It goes well beyond Rank/SAT as well, EC’s and especially Leadership and Rigor matter a lot.
Great program as well if you take advantage of it. Lots of opportunities that are really only available to Honors kids or that they have a significant leg up on the rest. Special trips, internships, jobs in the Dept, the list goes on.
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If you have a kid that is borderline for A&M then Blinn is actually a better path imo than regular admit. It’s cheaper and it puts kids in smaller classes while allowing them to do everything regular admits can do. It’s a nice transition as those Freshman classes with 350 kids are tough if you aren’t ready for it. You really have to be disciplined and willing to work on your own or else you will be crushed and some kids just aren’t ready for that along with all the adjustments of going to a school the size of A&M with the level of challenging coursework.
If your kid is very strong academically they will be fine, especially if they come from one of the large Public HS’s that are highly rated. It’s not nearly as much of an adjustment for them. Small school kids and kids from not so great HS’s though where they were the “smart kid” but maybe 20% of the school is considered college ready often get a big culture shock. They aren’t used to being in an environment with so many distractions that moves so fast with difficult classes and Profs that don’t know your name or care (if they speak English). They have gotten better than it used to be but those weed out classes are rough if you aren’t ready and they will chew you up and spit you out.
A&M weighs the NM quite a bit which is frustrating. It’s such a subjective measure as a 1 Day test to determine so much. My son is a Type 1 Diabetic and his Blood Sugar went through the roof during the test, they gave him some extra time but he was far from his best. He did well but will end up likely Commended and not NM Semi/Final. That probably cost him a very good shot at a Brown.
Your son will be fine for Engineering with those scores. Remember it’s the ETAM process so you have to work your way into your specific major so it’s wise to not be too aggressive in class schedules for his Freshman year to boost that GPA. GPA opens all the doors and you can always take more hours Soph-Sr year without as much on the line and after they are fully adjusted to college. If you fire out of the gate taking 15+ though and moving to your most advanced Math and Science you can that’s risky and stressful.
Don’t underestimate the value of EC’s as well as the rest of the resume. FWIW I have been assured by some folks in the know that my son’s profile is very strong for Honors Engineering for perspective. He’s Top 5% (4.0 UW) at a hyper competitive 6A HS, 1460 SAT (770 Math) and will take an ACT this Summer, 13 APs including both Calcs, Physics 1 and C, Bio, Chem, etc. He’s also got 5 PLTW’s in Biomedical and Engineering specialties (he wants BME) and is President/VP of 3 clubs as well as very involved in FRC Robotics on a highly successful team. Lots of other stuff as well, his only “flaw” is having a 1460 SAT and just missing NMSF.
If my son doesn’t get scholarship money from A&M but gets significant money from other good Engineering schools though he may go elsewhere in spite of deep Aggie roots. Many schools don’t care about NM much at all and some are obsessed with it, A&M is the latter. A lot of other schools care a lot more about Rigor and activities and look at the SAT as more of a secondary confirmation for a number of reasons.
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They really need a complete overhaul of the Top 10/6% rule because Texas is simply too big. We are pushing 400k kids graduating from college now as a state so simple math says that means about 40k students would be auto admit. If even half that amount applied to A&M that is still more than the entire Freshman class.
Of course the reality as well is the gap in quality of schools is a canyon. You have large schools that are basically college factories that prepare kids at an extremely high level where almost a majority of grads have enough college credit to be Sophomores (or close to it) and then you have a HUGE number of schools that are massive but have a small number of kids that are considered college ready at all. Simply pretending that doesn’t matter is lunacy, it penalizes kids who would succeed easily and it puts kids who aren’t prepared into a situation where they are behind the 8 ball from Day 1 in just about every way. Rules like Top 10% are designed to make Admissions people feel better but they aren’t a good way to ensure success. I know so many kids that went to bad HS’s and were Top 10% and decided to major in Eng or Business since they were auto admits and got crushed, they simply weren’t prepared. Certainly some can overcome but when they are competing against kids that are so much more prepared than they are it’s really tough. Yet A&M focuses on trying to recruit as many of those kids as they can knowing they are the most likely to struggle.
States like Georgia and Florida do a much better job at doing holistic admission for their Flagships. They also have a much more balanced financial aid system with scholarships easily accessible regardless of income and the cost of tuition already much lower than A&M and Texas. A&M and Texas end up with most kids paying full sticker price in spite of them having the 2 largest endowments of any Public Universities in the country and the State flush with cash.
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Agree. But top 10%/ top 6% is a rule indirectly created by the SB175 auto-admit law. That’s not much overhaul TAMU can do.
Top 10% in TAMU and top 6% in UT will definitely shrink as the actual rule was 75% of admitted students being first-time Texas high schools grads. This year Texas has 450K high school grad. UT already soft deny top6% kids by not offering them major. And we also see TAMU giving Blinn option to top 10% kids.
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I think for top students, EC will help on scholarships and honor enrollment. But for the rest of 90% regular high school students, they need to focus on their rank and scores first if they want TAMU or UT. There is not much room once a kiddo is outside top 10%. This past year, we see majority of those admitted outside top 10% are those with strong course rigor instead of spectacular EC.
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