State college admission criterion to remain for at least 2 years

[The Jacobin]

08:47 PM CDT on Wednesday, May 25, 2005

By HOLLY K. HACKER / The Dallas Morning News

AUSTIN – All attempts at changing the state's top 10 percent law on college admissions this legislative session are dead, lawmakers said Wednesday.

With a crucial legislative deadline passing and no more talk of compromise, the law will stay as is for at least two more years: The top 10 percent of high school students will still be guaranteed a spot at any Texas public university.

Several lawmakers had suggested changes, ranging from doing away with the law to capping the number of students who could enroll in college under the law.

Sen. Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, who supported some type of cap, predicted that the University of Texas at Austin will keep seeing more of its freshman class enter under the law, with other qualified students left out.

"In my district, in Plano, we have a lot of young people who are in the top 15 percent. ... They make 1200, 1500, 1300 on their SATs and they can't get in."

UT, which has been most affected by the law, admitted 72 percent of this year's applicants under the top 10 law. Leaders there say they have little discretion to round out the student body with applicants who have lower class ranks but who may have other talents.

Lawmakers passed the law in 1997 in an attempt to keep college campuses diverse after a federal court had ruled that race could no longer be used in the admissions process.

That ruling was supplanted two years ago by the U.S. Supreme Court.

In the waning days of the session, Ms. Shapiro, Sen. Royce West, D-Dallas, and others had discussed a possible compromise that would eventually admit only the top 7 percent automatically.

Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, said lawmakers should continue studying racial-diversity efforts at universities to see how many schools are considering race in admissions.

He said more high schools have sent students to UT because of the top 10 law, and he supports leaving the law as is.

"I heard no good public policy argument for gutting the top 10 percent rule, short of people who didn't get in being upset because they didn't get in," he said.

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/texassouthwest/stories/052605dntextop10.e350e8f8.html

[Gothmog]

1. I hate the 10% rule

Now that Hopwood has been overruled, there is no need for the 10% rule and it hurts students at the stronger schools. The legislature needs to get rid of this rule

[adamd]

2. I don't really see the problem with that

People who worked hard all through their high school education deserve a reward for that. For smaller schools and communities, it's probably a blessing because it's harder for their less prestigious schools to get their students into colleges like UT or A&M.

I suppose I could see a problem with people with lower GPAs but higher rankings in their school getting automatic admission over lower ranked people at their respective high schools with higher GPAs. I don't know how many students are really affected by that though.

I was in the top 20% of an almost 800 person graduating class. My GPA and SAT scores were decent, and I got into UNT (admittedly a lower end school, I'm aware) without a question. But my best friend in school who was just 1 rank behind me was admitted right away into UT. He was involved in a handful of organizations and was vice president of one of them, so maybe that had something to do with it.