The Texas 6% admissions policy does several things:
-It increases racial, economic and geographical diversity by automatically admitting students from lower performing schools who would not otherwise be admitted.
-It suppresses UT’s rank because some students automatically admitted will have lower test scores and will not graduate in 4-5 years.
-It sends out an OOS diaspora of Texas students from high performing schools with high test scores, who do not graduate in the top 6%, do not like or are not in the % high enough for Texas A&M, and do not like their other in state public options. See for example, all the Texas students at Alabama.
-It leads to lots of HS students switching to lower performing high schools where they have a better chance at the top 6%; and hyper-focus on ones class rank leading to selecting courses based on GPA rather than interest/enrichment, a decline in extra-curriculars that might impact class rank, and general stress.
Does UF need the negatives of such a policy to gain the positives?