The 10% rule is an attempt to do just that. It evaluates students against their 'peers' on the assumption that if someone excels in one environment (be it a relatively poor school, economically disadvantaged area etc) then they stand a chance to excel at college. So while a mediocre student at a good school may be more knowledgeable 'on day one', the top student at a lesser school may have more potential. Of course if 80% of admissions are being filled on this basis...perhaps they should change it to a 5% rule to allow for other circumstances too.
i think everyone agrees that we dont want race to be a component. but the bigger travesty is this viewpoint that we shouldn't use race as a factor in higher education today. because its not solving the problem and being post-racial. its living in a racial world, where kids are treated differently, in life and school, and have had different levels of effort put into their education, DUE to their race. yet when time comes to go to college, we tell them, we dont care that you were treated worse due to your race, because we are now above that. i dont know that much about educational programs. so your idea may very well be effective. i dont know. however there is research that indicates strongly that diversity, in it of itself, helps higher education. there is a lot of supreme court agreement on this issue as well. though of course this court is already attempting to overturn brown.
Middle class students who attend(ed) suburban schools (like myself) have advantages that inner city and rural students don't. Compared to poor people, hell yeah I'm rich. I shouldn't have used the word rich - "well to do" is more like it. We will have to agree to disagree. Personal? It's my alma mater and I don't want it to look like A&M
Sorry, but you are flat out wrong. Growing up (ie college aged kids) should be about exposing/educating kids to what is out there in the real world. A college education is only partially about what you learn in class. As somebody who graduated college over 15 years ago, I remember very little about what I learned in class. The things that stick with me are what I leanred in college OUTSIDE of the classroom. Providing students the opportunity to learn from their peers as well as from their professors contributes to the "college experience". Universities understand this already. They have the DUTY to ensure their student body is as well rounded as possible to benefit of all attending students. It's not a handout to the "lessor quality" kids. It more about recognizing that these kids have something to offer the university which benefits the kids that got 1600 on their SAT. You can't have all book smart kids ...you gotta have some street smart kids too to teach the book worms how to live a little. Conversely, the book worms can tutor the other kids and rub off how to be a good student. At the end of the day, both kids will be better adults. That's what it's about. A University has a DUTY to provide as broad experience as possible to it's student body. It can't do that if all the kids scored 1500 on their SAT and came from Sugarland.
This is the University of Texas, a state flagship institution. It's goal is to educate the students of Texas. You're not educating Texas when you don't look like the state.
The operative word here is students. If you have the competitive marks you get in, because you are a better student. I think that because of the suburban high school I went to, we may have had a different experience. I went to Klein Forest. It is pretty diverse. You have rich kids, then middle class kids like me, and then you had the kids bussed in from Acres Homes. Let's just say I saw a lot of things that shape my view of this topic. I think so. This is probably the nicest end to an argument in the history of the D&D. Me either....it would be awful to have to call you a poser.
I believe that setting an automatic admission for the top 10% may not be the best thing to do. It assumes facts which are not clearly in evidence. Perhaps a top 5% rule would be better. In closing on this issue (for me at least), I will say this. The girl who filed the suit should have gone to a JUCO, gotten good grades, and transferred into UT-Austin.
At the most it is a subjective difference of opinion. If you are doing a science or engineering you need that info for grad school or your career. What was your major?
Yes they are. demographics are available online, check engineering, chemistry, math, and physics demographics. Not sure but I feel that using race to judge someones ability or value is wrong whatever...i think race being a factor is racist. i dunno what a post-racial card is yes yes yes i wish i saw this before i actually wrote a response. why did you even both to repond if you just used it to take a shot at me.
Lets take your example You are a scientist. You are studying people from all over the world. The scientist that has a broad view of the world probably will be excel over the scientist who had "better grades" but never had any experience outside of "Sugarland". If you understand how people tick, you'll be a better scientist. Lets take it to the extreme. Would you rather have a Dr. that was born on Mars and took a distance learning class and got 100% on every test he took. He had PERFECT grades. Is he a more qualified Dr. than a B average Dr born here? Of course not. Dr.'s arn't graded only on their grades. Successful people are generally well rounded people that excel well in a couple areas. We've all known smart people that don't know how to tie their own shoelace. When you are doing things that involves people, whether its building things for people and studying medicine or whatever. You'll be better at what you do if you've had a well-rounded education ...as opposed to just being admitted based on test scores and grades. Besides, if somebody had changed the rules on this girl midstream then I would have some compassion. But the same rules applied when she entered high school. As a freshmen, she had EQUAL OPPORTUNITY to get into Texas.
I think as long as standardized tests and grades in K-12 are biased then something should be done to correct that bias in college admittance. If we can correct the bias early on and level the playing field then by all means let's judge more on merit.
People of all races live in good and bad places. Race has nothing to do with how rounded your life has been. What was your major again that you don;t even remember what you learned?
Casey...does your analysis change if we substitute socioeconomic for race? It seems to me that the bias in schools today is largely a socioeconomic one.
The only reason this rule is a problem because 80+ percent of freshmen are now being admitted to UT under the top 10% law. Compare this to ~45% for A&M...
Since most of my points about the limitations of the SAT or where it is not eqally predictive of success by persons of different groups (even admitted by the College Board which represents its interests) I'll move on from that discussion. I found no sensible rationale for this position. Race IS a factor in society and institutions (criminalization, health, education). In the vast majority of cases it works against URM (underrepresented minorities--Latinos, African Americans, Native Americans). Yet you want to dig your heels in about a policy that allows race to be a factor when allowing it seems to impact only about 1-2% of the demographics of the school in the 1st place? That is an incredibly convenient position to hold if you don't happen to be an URM. Largely, but not entirely. Sometimes socioeconomics drives disparities in education, health, criminal enforcement, etc, other times race contributes more so or at least in addition to. Latinos and African Americans in middle and upper classes get discriminated too. For example, hospital studies for instance have shown African American women with the same conditions and same health coverage get less aggressive treatment than other persons in a similar state except for their gender and race. If you are more in to testimonial evidence, if you know a decent sample of middle to upper class African Americans or Latinos you are friend with ask them about experiences of discrimination (in seeking a job, at a hospital/seeking treatment, in school/colleges, etc). Again, I am all for using non-racial/ethnic factors in admissions to create diversity more so than race/ethnicity (e.g., parental income, parental education, geography/10% type rule, multi-lingual), but I am not about to say race information should be precluded from an admission committee, that it doesn’t provide some additional information in which to judge a candidate or how they might influence the campus environment.
It is about inviting people to your school that represent as wide a background as possible ...that includes many factors ...with one factor being race. major = Cognitive Science I can't write a single line of Lisp anymore ...but the friendships I forged with friends that lead me to visit Barbados, Italy, Canada, England, etc have contributed immensly to my maturation as an adult.
