http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/6338756.html Bill would limit top 10% college admission rule Senate tentatively passes measure that would give more students a chance to attend UT By JANET ELLIOTT Copyright 2009 Houston Chronicle March 24, 2009, 10:27PM AUSTIN — High school students who don’t rank in the top 10 percent of their graduating classes would have a better shot at going to the University of Texas under a bill that would limit automatic admissions. The Texas Senate tentatively voted 22-8 Tuesday to allow universities to limit admissions under the top 10 percent law to just 60 percent of an incoming freshman class. The university would have discretion over the other 40 percent. After a final vote this week, the bill would go to the Texas House. A similar bill passed the Senate in 2007, but died in a House floor vote. The change would primarily affect UT’s main campus, which admitted 81 percent of the 2008 freshman class under the top 10 percent law. UT-Dallas and Texas A&M University both admitted close to half of their class under the law last fall. UT officials have said they need relief from the law in order to recognize qualified students who have special abilities but do not rank in the top 10 percent. “No other institution has their hands tied behind their back as to who they can and cannot admit,” said Sen. Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, author of the bill. The automatic admissions law was enacted in 1997 as a way to boost minority enrollment at the state’s flagship university after a court ruling temporarily prohibited admissions officials from considering students’ race and ethnicity. The U.S. Supreme Court later ruled that public institutions of higher education could use race as a factor in deciding which students to admit. Some senators who represent inner-city districts resisted the change, saying they worried enrollments of Hispanic and black students, as well as students from the state’s smallest high schools, would fall. Shapiro said that under the top 10 percent law Hispanic enrollment at UT-Austin has grown by 7 percent and African-American enrollment is up by 3 percent, while Anglo enrollment is down 13 percent. But she said those shifts reflect demographic changes in high school students.
How does the top 10% even work when some schools are more difficult academically than others? Seems a pretty poor compromise for lack of a better idea.
It doesn't really matter how difficult a school is, all that matters is how your grades are relative to your classmates. The real drawback of this rule is that students who know how to game the system can choose easier classes or easier teachers and get an unfair advantage over students that don't. For example in my HS, there were two AP US History teachers. One teacher gave nearly everyone As while the other one was harder. If you got the easy teacher you got a huge advantage from a GPA standpoint, although the students under the harder teacher learned more.
