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mom2collegekids wrote:
Did UT reduce the auto-admit threshold from top 10% to top 7or 8% to give itself more room to implement AA?
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Top 7%/8% seems to be targeted to fill about three quarters of the frosh class at UT Austin; staying at top 10% would likely leave no space at all of non-auto-admit frosh.
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If top 7-8% auto-admit leaves 25% of ADMISSIONS for non-auto-admit frosh, does that include athletes? Or are they not counted at all?
Still, leaving 25% of ADMISSIONS is a lot…because we’re really not meaning seats, even if that is the yield goal.
UT has about 10,000 frosh seats. Don’t know how many they admit to get that yield. 20,000? I don’t know.
Seems like they looked at who the students are who were in that group between top 7% and 10% and saw that there were too many non-URMs…so they dropped the threshold to give them more room to play with.
I predict that there is no way the Texas State Legislature will revoke or tinker with the present Top Ten rule. The legislature in Texas is very much dominated by representatives from small cities and towns and rural areas. Their constituents, largely white citizens, get a huge advantage from the Top Ten rule and always have. White, Black and Hispanic supporters from regions of Texas where the policy is popular won’t change it to mollify suburbanites, particularly in light of the fact that many minority applicants with higher marks than Fisher were not admitted to the U of Texas-Austin.
43592 applicants
17006 admits
7743 enrolled (7566 full time)
So 44-46% yield, depending on if you count all or just full time enrollees, although this does not indicate what the yield is for automatic admits, Texas non-automatic admits, and non-Texas admits.
However, if they lowered the rank threshold for automatic admission, it is likely that the additional admits in the top 7-10% range will have a higher yield than those automatic admits in the top 0-7% range.
I think they dropped from the 10% to the 7% just because the number of students graduating from Texas high schools was growing faster than UT was growing. Just pure numbers dictated that they had to reduce or they would have had 100% of the Texas admits from that 10% and no way to get into the school without being in that 10%.
I also read somewhere that it is not 25% of the freshman class admitted under the holistic plan, but 25% of Texas freshman. Also, at a school admitting 10,000 students, the number of athletes is not going to make that much difference if they are in the holistic group or not. Maybe 300 freshman athletes, some from OOS, some in the top 7% grooup, some in the holistic group. At a school the size of UT, I’m sure no one cares which group the athlete falls into. Some of the holistic group seem to be ‘political’ appointees - friends of the univeristy president, governor, etc. Ms. Fisher should have had friends in higher places.
I believe they probably admit 10% of the class as OOS and international for the high tuition fees and another 5-10% who are athletes, effectively leaving the real holistic admissions to 5% or less which was what the courtcase was about.
Your math is off. UT has only 18 teams while Ivies have more than 35 teams and they make do with approx. 200 recruits. Cannot imagine UT has more than 200 athletes per class. So it should be less than 2.0%.
I used 300 as a generous number for freshmen athletes. Some sports limit the number of athletes on a team, others limit the number of freshmen receiving scholarships. It is possible, although very unlikely, that a team gives all its scholaships to freshmen (not allowed in football).
I don’t think UT comes close to 5-10% of the freshmen class being freshmen athletic scholarship admits.
My nephew attended a competitive high school in Austin. He wasn’t in the top of his class and was denied admission. His appeal was unsuccessful. He was really devastated - he was born with burnt orange blood. He met many of the UT players and coaches. He was a little guy. The photo of him with Vince Young is really something.
Page 1 says there are 221 non-resident aliens which is about 3% and page 2 says there are 7.7% OOS.
It is quite possible that I overstated the athletes. I saw a note somewhere saying they have a total of 500 athletes which should be split across years.
So about 75% auto-admit Texas residents and 11% non-Texas (domestic and international) leaves about 14% for Texas residents who were not auto-admit. Of course, recruited athletes could be in any of these categories.
The 75% number is quite meaningless. Auto admit does not guarantee admission into a major and very few students I know would want to major in basket weaving just because it is UT even if they are admitted. Btw, no instate students are denied admission to UT. All they have to do is take up UT’s offer to study elsewhere (from an approved list of second tier schools for a year, even a community college), do reasonably well and then they can transfer in guaranteed, but again the major is not guaranteed. Most majors where UT is competitive and has good programs are fiercely competitive and entry into those majors is done thru a holistic process where race plays an outsized role in admissions. Few students who compete for these majors take up UT’s offer to study elsewhere for a year because they want UT only for certain majors. They choose to go to other schools and not take chances with a second tier school in Texas for a year even though by doing that they are guaranteed transfer into UT during their second year
If UT had lost this case, URM’s would have practically disappeared from competitive and impacted majors.
Yes, my nephew didn’t take the CAP offer because he wanted to major in business and knew it would be hard to get in as a sophomore. He didn’t want to spend a year at UTSA, either.
My oldest son got in as an OOS student in biomedical engineering, a very competitive department. But he had excellent stats and ECs.
The CAP admissions don’t guarantee a major, only a possibility of an admission in future so it is meaningless to accept if one is interested in business or engineering, the hardest schools to get into at UT. They are also the two schools with the most money to give out in merit scholarships for their honors students.
UT admissions have become unpredictable lately. Even those admitted to the best majors because they are simply the best are being turned down for honors programs while some with lower ranks and scores are being given the honors programs. My guess is that they are deciding who will show up.
I am not against Affirmative Action.
Abigail Fisher was a student with a mediocre Academic Index and a mediocre Personal Achievement Index. She is also not cute. She cannot be an effective poster child for the case to abolish AA.
However this Salon statement is not substantiated anywhere:
“In 2008, 47 such students were admitted who had lower grades or test scores than Fisher. Forty-two of them were white. Only five were people of color.”
Amanda Marcotte, who is the Salon author either has reading comprehension issues or is an outright liar.
According to the Fisher’s lawyers 64 minority students were admitted through the holistic process with the Academic Index less that what Fisher had.
The rest of the Salon’s narrative is bogus too. It is enough to visit admitted students threads at this very Forum to see who is being admitted where, with what academic stats and who is given preference.
I feel that Salon, Mother Jones, and the Huffington Post are all competing to become the Left’s equivalent of Fox News. Entertaining sometimes, but certainly not journalism.
Why are you attacking the author when you clearly haven’t read the case file which is widely available online?
Respondent’s Brief:
[quote]
E. Petitioner’s Application For Admission
Petitioner, a Texas resident, applied for admission to UT’s Fall 2008 freshman class in Business Administration or Liberal Arts, with a combined SAT score of 1180 out of 1600 and a cumulative 3.59 GPA. JA 40a-41a. Because petitioner was not in the top 10% of her high school class, her application was considered pursuant to the holistic review process described above. JA 40a. Petitioner scored an AI of 3.1, JA 415a, and received a PAI score of less than 6 (the actual score is contained in a sealed brief, ECF No. 52). The summary judgment record is uncontradicted that—due to the stiff competition in 2008 and petitioner’s relatively low AI score—petitioner would not have been admitted to the Fall 2008 freshman class even if she had received “a ‘perfect’ PAI score of 6.” JA 416a.
Petitioner also was denied admission to the summer program, which offered provisional admission to some applicants who were denied admission to the fall class, subject to completing certain academic requirements over the summer. JA 413a-14a. (UT discontinued this program in 2009.) Although one African-American and four Hispanic applicants with lower combined AI/PAI scores than petitioner’s were offered admission to the summer program, so were 42 Caucasian applicants with combined AI/PAI scores identical to or lower than petitioner’s. In addition, 168 African-American and Hispanic applicants in this pool who had combined AI/PAI scores identical to or higher than petitioner’s were denied admission to the summer program.6
Footnote
6. These figures are drawn from UT’s admissions data and are provided in response to petitioner’s unsupported assertion (at 2) that her “academic credentials exceeded those of many admitted minority applicants.”