http://www.dailytexanonline.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2003/01/30/3e38e5a688406 Oh, the horror. Bad, bad, bad idea. This guy must find diversity more important than say, succeeding by merit and having qualified doctors, lawyers, teachers, engineers, and scientists. Fatal flaws in the proposal: 1. High schools vary as to quality. The gap between colleges is monstrous. Most colleges are actually open enrollment. Yet even there, some people have to graduate in the Top 10%. Every student at Rice is probably qualified more than most of those people for an engineering program. This actually encourages good students to go to bad schools. 2. It eliminates the LSAT (MCAT, GRE) as an important factor. As I understand it, GPA is considered by most graduate administratorsas mostly "how hard did you work?" Your test score is "how smart are you, really?" While hard work is important, it's nice to have people with actual brains as well in your flagship institutions of higher education. 3. The reasons for having it are not the same at the graduate level. In addition to encouraging diversity, such is more advisable for college because it's difficult to get scholarships to high quality private high schools. Scholarships are abundant for college... especially if you're smart. Thus, you have less of a "it's not your fault you went to a bad school" argument. People choose their college. Yes, I know, some people have other limitations... but admissions already take those into account (like having a baby and having to go to night school). I wonder what % of slots he wants to allocate for this purpose? And he wants to determine who gets them by lottery. Ick. Thank goodness I'm already at UT Law. Coming from an out of state college, this would have hurt my chances. As it is, it might just dilute the value of my JD in the future. I hope this doesn't get much support.
This is very interesting. I'm currently a UT senior who did not get into UT Law School for Fall '03. I'm pretty sure I'm in the top 10% (I don't know how it would be calculated). If this passes, could I "sit out" a year and re-apply or transfer in from another university?
Smokey: Like I know . I'd certainly guess that you could re-apply in a year, though I doubt transferring would work (not common w/law schools, anyway). Oh, forgot one other point: encourages people to major in the "athlete" fields. Biology majors would be screwed, communication majors would be jumping up and down (note: that comes from my own undergrad experience. Maybe Communications is a very good major wherever you are).
I'm actually against the top 10% rule applied at any level. I wouldn't count on it passing because I'm sure the UT bigwigs oppose it. McCombs School of Business and UT Law School have national reputations which would sink like a rock if every undergraduate in Texas in the top 10% of their respective universities could get in. There are just not enough seats, and I am not sure if this law would really achieve its intent. I am not African-American or Latino. The lottery system is absurd.
This is very true. I think GPAs are overrated as to when it comes to looking at leadership, creative potential, intelligence. They mainly measure how diligent a worker you are. If I was going to hire a project manager, I would really put a high emphasis on the GPA. If I am looking for a creative guy or a CEO, past track record seems much more interesting to me.
that is ridiculous.... It will hurt the people at top schools the most.. I dont want to hear.. oh you went to hard school but ur not in the top 10 percent and we gave our spots away to people who were top 10 percent at easier schools... maybe this only would apply to public undergrad schools. surely they arent going to be having the top 10 percent rule apply to rice as well as Ut.. because being in the top 10 percent at those two schools is quite a different thing
I don't really like 10% for a lot of reasons but if you do the work and get the degree aren't you qualified?
Agreed; I'm against the "top 10% rule" at any level. I have trouble believing there are not opportunities to succeed even in bad high schools, and those living in cities usually have some sort of option of doing their work at a magnet school (unless the issue is transportation to/from school). At UT, teachers complain about the lower quality of a few of the students resulting from this, and how ill-prepared they are compared to the rest of the class. Are we really doing these students a favor by throwing them into something they're not prepared for? As for grad school - you've got to be kidding. I was definitely in the bottom half of my (Chemistry major) class at Rice, and maybe even at the bottom for all I know. Of course, that's a small sampling of people, many of whom were insanely competitive. Oh well, I still got a Ph.D. from UT and am now teaching these same classes to others. I guess, according to some people, this should not have happened. No matter how much research I did between college and grad school... Grades aren't everything.
This idea is r****ded. UT Law only has like a 15% acceptance rate as it is. That means that the admissions board has to carefully select each available spot. It's not like undergrad where you can just stick anyone in Liberal Arts and let them fend for themselves. If your grades/test scores aren't good enough to get into UT Law, maybe you should apply to one of the others in state. There's UH, Baylor, TSU, South Texas Law, and I think Texas Tech.
Yeah, this is a ridiculously bad idea for one simple reason: Grad schools don't have the capacity to handle all these people. UT has an undergrad population of 40,000 or so - 4,000 "top 10%" students. The LBJ grad school has an enrollment of 100 students per year. What if 300 undergrads want into LBJ? Does the school have to take them all? Are there NO spots then for merit-based people? Or out of state people? Does someone who got in the top 10% of a fashion design major have an automatic right to go to UT Law over some student who went to Harvard for undergrad? This makes no sense whatsoever. It's one thing at the high school level. It's entirely ridiculous at the college level.
Haven, Communications at UT is highly competitive, so I hope you are referring to other schools and colleges. I'm in the Broadcast Journalism sequence and work/volunteer at the student run TV station and we do a lot of work. In fact today I went and covered the TACHE conference in Austin for one of my classes. I also did sports on our weekly news program monday night . Not ragging you, I just want to make it clear, my field of study is highly competitive. And TAMU/OU suck as always . No offense meant supporters/alumni of those schools. Its just university policy to hate those institutions. I don't want to be homeless, so I abide by it .
Better start studying Admission is becoming difficult as more people are applying to law school not just UT. With a larger field of very highly qualified students, UT has increased its selectivity. I don't know the exact # but 15% sounds about right. I doubt it's higher than 25%. 80% of the seats are reserved for Texas residents.
So what should I major in? Philosophy? Econ? Go for General Studies, pick the easiest classes, make the top 10%, and support this bill. If you're lucky, UT Law will have to accept you.
My advice is to major in your favorite subject. Odds are you will make a higher grades and enjoy your classes. I hear UT likes non-traditional majors for law school like the sciences and engineering.
Major, Having met you in person, how on earth can you of all people tell someone that . I agree about the classes part when it comes to outside your major stuff. There are a lot of ways to make it easy on yourself. But I did not pick an easy major, I am in a crazily competitive field but my love is sports, and I will do something in that regard in the future, hopefully Broadcasting. Gosh knows the fans deserve better than the crap they get now .
