It is interesting that you suggest eliminating the top 10% rule and mention Florida. If you go read the UF thread, you will see someone suggesting that their state should adopt a program similar to the state of Texas, in the name of fairness and transparency.
The angst on that thread, which I’m also following because son was deferred to RD, is about in-state vs OOS. Guarantee that same parent advocating to adopt the Texas model would be even more outraged when even lower performing students are automatically admitted. At least the vast majority of the OOS kids admitted there are still very high performing academically. I would have less of a problem with that than something that is based on a squishy metric like class rank.
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Someone I’ve been chatting with on one of the Facebook pages received 7 tabs this morning!
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Last year 59% of A&M’s incoming class was from the top 10%. When it gets to 75% in future years (UT’s max)) with flat enrollment, then the legislature will gladly approve lowering to top 8%.
Start with holistic admissions for engineering and Mays. The percentage of Mays from top 10% (auto admission) is probably over 75%, like the car salesman above.
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We have a top 7% auto admit friend that didn’t get Mays. He applied in August.
I had wondered if that meant Mays filled with their top 10…but they must be very particular even with their auto admits! I don’t know his test scores but I know he’s a 4yr multi sport athlete, student council, PALS, etc. I was surprised!
I don’t think all the auto admit get actually admitted to their majors. I saw several auto admit mentioning in the blogs that they were offered to pick a different major. They can’t accept all the auto admit students so for sure there is some holistic admissions review as well in that group, and for TAM, in counts as well when everybody applied.
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Maybe just ETAM for engineering if they apply early (end of September)?
My east TX relatives didn’t take SAT, were top 10% and got Mays. Doing well. I believe Frisco Dad showed past stats with top 10% admissions success in Mays and ETAM. Smaller majors like Viz wouldn’t be open to all top 10%.
Thanks…I’ll DM you.
Sorry but if you’re top 10% and apply in August/September, you will get Mays as your first choice major. It doesn’t get full til late October or November in most cases. NO WAY it fills in August. Auto admits will get their first choice major if apply early (and something other than Engineering).
As for the discussion on this thread this morning… it literally happens every year. There are several stages of TAMU application…
Stage 1: Excited
Stage 2: Hopeful
Stage 3: Frustrated
Stage 4: Comparison WE ARE HERE NOW
Stage 5: Disappointed MOVING INTO THIS STAGE
Stage 6: Denial
Stage 7: Acceptance (of decision)
Stage 8: MY favorite… Go get it done Stage
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7 tabs chat chose TEAM only?
We’re gonna need some details lol! Thank you!
Love those stages.
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Have any of your kids done the overnight with Cadets? How was that experience? Anything we should know?
Also, if anyone is going to the L.E.A.D Summit this weekend, I’d love to hear about your experience. My son missed the cut off for this one, but is going in March.
My son did it twice. Really good experience both times. Second squadron was a much better fit for him. Each group has its own personality/brand. So nice to compare. I thought he’d hate the Corps and both times he loved it and he is now committed.
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Well a lot of people don’t have a good understanding of admissions and the consequences of policies like Top 10%. It sounds good in theory but in practice it has lots of negative consequences of which I laid out a few. The simple fact that would have well over 40000 students that are automatically guaranteed admission to a college that can only take about 13000 is enough and that’s for it to be thrown out. Add in Texas and that is about 23k. So if even half the students utilize the policy it breaks the system. Of course that also means that no one outside of the Top 10% can get in and of course no one from OOS.
That’s not even getting into the qualifications issue or caring about outcomes of students who are put into schools that they are unprepared for.
BTW Class Rank does matter. It’s a good indicator of academic potential. It’s just not the be all and end all and that is what the Top 10% Rule makes it out to be. My concern is about what has the best outcomes for students and the state overall a lot more than treating admission to Flagship schools like prizes to be won. It’s not like simply being admitted to A&M or Texas (or UF) is a guarantee of success in life. The worst case is when you have a kid that could have been successful had they gone to a school and majored in what they were academically prepared for put into a school and class they weren’t prepared for and they fail. That’s not on the student that’s on the system that promotes that.
Many of the students this is designed to “help” are 1st Gen with little support and have never had truly rigorous academics. Many have not spent significant time on college campuses and aren’t used to traveling and being away from home. Now you put them in a class with 300 kids and a significant percentage of them are just taking it for an Easy A because they already took the AP in High School and they have been taught disciplined study habits and gone to Kumon since they could walk. Now some of those kids can go into that environment and swim with the sharks and do just fine but a lot of them aren’t prepared for that kind of culture shock and academic rigor.
As I also stated this isn’t about kids from rich HS’s getting into A&M and Texas. Those kids are just fine, they will likely succeed anywhere because for right or wrong they are academically prepared and they typically have a strong support structure as they are the most likely to have parents that also went to college and have financial resources to help them. If the great tragedy is they go to OU or Tech or Arkansas instead of A&M or Texas that isn’t worth losing sleep over. It’s sad for them and it may not be the best thing for the state if those kids leave but in the end they are likely to succeed anyway because of that support structure.
Life isn’t fair but when you ignore academic realities you only make the problem worse. The goal should always be to put kids in the best position to succeed and to have as much opportunity as possible, the Top 10% Rule works against that principle because it is a deeply flawed barometer of academic success in college.
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I actually really agree this your points and I’d like to add a little more:
Even though students in competitive high schools (and I mean actually competitve) and affluent areas are extremely well off wherever they may go, there’s some insanely talented students where getting to top 10% is insanely difficult and it looks like they’re just an average student when they’re in the 1st or 2nd quarter, maybe even 3rd. The top 10% rule overlooks these EXTREMELY qualified kids.
I go to a highly competitve 6a school in Greater Houston where top 10% requires a 4.7+ (out of 5), meaning essentially all APs & honors throughout high school and only 1 or 2 Bs if any. Yet the students in the 2nd quarter who have a 4.1 GPA and have taken 10 AP classes and have SAT scores of 1450 have their class rank completely weighing them down at these schools because there’s so little space left for non autos.
The rule does students on both ends of the socioeconomic status spectrum a disservice: you have the previously mentioned points of less affluent students being put in environments they’re not ready for and you have more affluent students overlooked as a result of their rank. Which, understandably so, makes it difficult for colleges because they can’t just admit all the rich kids from competitve ISDs. So, I personally can’t reach a conclusion on what TX legislature should do, but as someone experiencing it myself, I do have some thoughts haha
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Has anyone who got 7 tabs on Saturday for Blinn TEAM seen an update in AIS today?
One answer is to return to the combo - top x% PLUS an ACT/SAT score of +1250 (or whatever) gets you auto admission. Otherwise - holistic.
And admit to the major - holistic review - not the university. To increase prestige of business school, etc.
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No, not yet and my daughter is getting worried. Difficult to know when it might update since it seems unclear when the systems sync.
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Has anyone received the 3 options this week? We have a family friend who hasn’t heard anything and is hoping to get those options this week. I know there was a big flurry last week of which my daughter was a part.