10% – an opinion
February 5, 2018
As many of you are aware, the State of Texas has a law where the top 10% of students in their high school class get automatic admission to any state school, and in the case of the University of Texas at Austin, it’s raised to 7%.
This law puts students at highly competitive schools (such as Cy Woods) at a disadvantage, which makes sense as it was put into place to increase the rate that students at less competitive high schools attend college. This sounds good at first, but basing admissions on one arbitrary statistic about a student isn’t doing anyone any good at all, and it makes it very easy for students to play the system to their advantage.
This law has led many qualified students to not even apply to the University of Texas at Austin, or in more disheartening situations, qualified students are rejected because there isn’t enough room for them, while less qualified students who played the system are accepted without any problem.
It also creates a hyper competitive atmosphere where stress and envy can overcome students, creating a less than ideal atmosphere for students to prosper and grow.
I feel like college admissions should be based on a holistic process that takes into account multiple factors about your accomplishments both academically and extracurricularly, and to me, this rule is just a slap in the face to that. Class rank is probably one of the most arbitrary determinants of academic success in high school. It just all depends on the nature of your high school.
George Tighe • Feb 5, 2018 at 9:53 PM
Although I’ve often believed the same thing about automatic admission, especially at a school as strong as Cy-Woods, I think it’s important to view it in the light of other schools and districts. The purpose of automatic admission is to attempt to equalize educational opportunity for students leaving high school. There is a very clear disparity in the quality of education even within the state of Texas alone. Is it right that bright students attending weaker schools do not attend schools like UT or A&M? How can we know if they deserve to be there if even the best students at worse schools are never able to stack up against the worst students at the best schools? Automatic admission provides an opportunity for the best students at weaker schools to attend state schools, somewhat equalizing the academic playing field.