Texas A&M vs. UT: which school is a better fit?

boneh3ad
Wed, 06 Oct 2010 13:20:48 +0000

iambored10:

You might think the top 10% law is silly but in some aspects it helps UT. Imagine all valedictorians/salutatorians from large schools in Dallas/Houston/San Antonio/Austin (IE. Plano West, Plano East, Cypress Creek, Cypress Fairbanks, Highland Park) who (not saying all) come to UT.



Alright buddy, I realize you probably haven’t been around all that much yet, but let’s put on our serious pants here for a second and think about this. Go look at the flagship university in most state university systems and tell you you can’t say the same thing. UT, TAMU, Berkeley, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Purdue, Florida, Penn State, Penn, the list goes on and on.

All those people applying to UT that are at the top of their class are not doing so because of the top-10% law. They are doing it because it is a good school, and most people in their situation want to go to a good school.

The top-10% law is around because they wanted to even the playing field for kids coming from those rural schools. It is sort of akin to affirmative action in that it assumes that a lot of those kids would get overlooked because they didn’t really have the opportunity to stand out with the opportunities available at their small school. The end result is that you get a lot of kids that actually would have been overlooked, but you also bring in some riff-raff with those guys. It also has the added benefit of encouraging those who would ordinarily perhaps not thought of college to give it a more serious thought if they know they can get in.

I must admit, though:
6th Street >> Northgate