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The GrandDaddy of them all!
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bah, i'm not a big fan of the top 10% rule (although i am in the top 10% of my graduating class)
this story ran in the houston chronicle
Quote:
Despite breezing through Houston's Yates High School with a 3 .9 grade-point average, Sean Watkins earned a 990 on his SAT college admissions test, just below the midpoint among the nation's test takers.
"I didn't learn how to study at Yates," he says. "I didn't study because I didn't have to. I just had to pay attention in class. The work was not that hard."
But while many students with an SAT score that low wouldn't be accepted to the state's two flagship universities, Watkins was a highly coveted recruit when he graduated in 2000 because he is black and because he finished in the top 10 percent of his class in a predominantly black high school. The Texas A&M University System chancellor personally invited him to attend A&M, but Watkins found the $58,000 in private and university scholarships at the University of Texas more enticing.
Since the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals barred Texas universities from using race in admissions and scholarships in its 1996 Hopwood decision, UT and A&M have increasingly relied on minority students with low SAT or ACT scores to boost campus diversity.
And so, with the U.S. Supreme Court poised to deliver a watershed decision this year on whether colleges can use racial preferences in admissions, Watkins finds himself at the center of a national debate. If preferences are banned nationally, many states will look to Texas for answers on how to promote college diversity.
The high court will hear oral arguments Tuesday on the constitutionality of racial preferences at the University of Michigan, and a decision is expected by this summer.
One of the few things state legislators could do to increase college diversity after the Hopwood decision was to pass a law guaranteeing Texas high school students who graduate in the top 10 percent of their classes admission to the public university of their choice.
Because many Texas high schools remain largely segregated by race, the law helps black and Hispanic students who graduate in the top 10 percent of their schools by placing them on the same level as white students who graduate in the top 10 percent of their schools. The law, passed in 1997 and implemented in 1998, is designed to offset the fact that blacks and Hispanics tend to score lower than whites on standardized tests.
Some contend that Watkins, through no fault of his own, should serve as a warning for other states to not follow in Texas' path. The more students who are automatically admitted to flagship institutions with low SAT scores, these critics say, the less room there is for perhaps more deserving students who do not attain a certain ranking at a tougher high school.
"The top 10 percent plan, as currently administered in Texas, has dumbed down the overall academic qualifications of incoming freshmen at UT and A&M," said Edward Blum, a 1973 UT graduate who is a fellow with the Center for Equal Opportunity, a Washington, D.C., group opposed to racial preferences.
But others say the law is doing exactly what it was intended to by giving deserving minorities a fair chance to attend the state's best public institutions. They contend that standardized tests are culturally biased, and they point out that freshman GPAs and retention rates have not been affected by the top 10 percent rule at UT and A&M.
"The top 10 percent plan is not a perfect system, but we needed to put something in place that would encourage minority enrollment," said state Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston. "I don't think it has in any way led to a dumbing down of the schools. I don't think SAT test scores are a very accurate predictor of one's intelligence."
Among Texas students enrolled in 1996, 14 percent of the black freshmen at UT had SAT (or ACT equivalent) scores below 1000, compared with 13 percent of Hispanics, 2 percent of whites and 3 percent of Asian-Americans. By 2001, the latest year for which such statistics are available, 23 percent of blacks had such low SAT scores, compared with 17 percent of Hispanics, 3 percent of whites and 4 percent of Asians.
At A&M in 1996, 32 percent of black freshmen had such SAT scores, compared with 23 percent of Hispanics, 7 percent of whites and 11 percent of Asians. Five years later, 43 percent of black freshmen had these scores, compared with 23 percent of Hispanics, 9 percent of whites and 13 percent of Asians.
The 1997 law is also designed to help minorities who are not in the top 10 percent by allowing college admissions officials to give more weight to factors such as disadvantaged socioeconomic status, bilingual households and first-generation college students. But the majority of the increase in students with SAT scores in the bottom half comes from automatically admitted students.
UT and A&M officials say they typically admitted top 10 percent students even before Hopwood, but they did not actively recruit from predominantly minority schools and did not tailor scholarships for them the way they do now. (Watkins gets to pocket the financial aid he doesn't spend at UT , where tuition, room and board cost about $12,000 a year.)
Davida Charney, a UT writing professor who oversees the freshman writing program, said such statistics are helping to create a climate of distrust on the Austin campus. She said she hasn't noticed a drop in the quality of students since the top 10 percent law went into effect, but she has seen quite a few students make such claims in their compositions.
"The perception is that even if it's supposed to be the fairest way to go, it's not fair," said Charney, who supports the top 10 percent program. "It's kind of unfortunate. It hasn't circumvented the problem of seeming unfair, and that's the main thing it was supposed to do."
In January, President Bush not only called the program fair, but he also touted it as a model that could be emulated by the rest of the country when his Justice Department filed a brief asking the Supreme Court to strike down racial preferences.
Like UT and A&M officials, Bush pointed out that although enrollment of blacks and Hispanics at the schools dipped immediately after the Hopwood ruling, the top 10 percent plan has helped bring those numbers to roughly pre-Hopwood levels.
In the fall of 1996, 64.7 percent of UT 's freshman class was white, 14.7 percent was Asian-American, 14.5 percent was Hispanic and 4.1 percent was black . The fall 2002 freshman class was 61.5 percent white, 18.3 percent Asian-American, 14.3 percent Hispanic and 3 .4 percent black .
Even though A&M is often regarded as less hospitable to minorities than UT , the primary difference in their enrollments is that UT typically has more Asian-American students and A&M has more whites. In the fall of 1996, 80.4 percent of A&M's freshmen were white, 11.2 percent Hispanic, 3 .6 percent black and 2.8 percent Asian-American. In the fall of 2002, 82.3 percent of the freshmen were white, 9.6 percent Hispanic, 3 .4 percent Asian-American and 2.6 percent black .
Advocates of racial preferences, such as Harvard's Civil Rights Project and the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, have recently published lengthy studies saying the Texas program is not an effective replacement for preferences. One of their main arguments is that enrollment for Hispanics and blacks should be even higher than in 1996 because both groups are significantly underrepresented according to their Texas population.
Proponents of racial preferences have also criticized "top percent" programs in California and Florida that were enacted after Texas' as being ineffective.
The plans also have come under attack from some conservative groups for being nothing more than substitutes for racial preferences. They say if the Supreme Court strikes down preferences, top percent plans might be the next to face legal challenges.
"The legislative record is crystal clear that when the Texas top 10 percent plan was enacted, without a doubt the debate within the Legislature was its effect on minority admissions," Blum said.
Blum said Texas has the least race-neutral plan because it is the only state that guarantees students admission even to a flagship school. The top 4 percent plan in California guarantees admission only to the University of California system, not necessarily UC-Berkeley or UCLA, and Florida's "Talented 20" guarantees admission only to a state university.
Thus, he claims, the Texas plan has generated more resentment among white students, has diluted the quality of students at the flagships and has contributed to overcrowding at those institutions.
David Colburn, provost at the University of Florida, which is that state's flagship institution, said the school admits only the cream of the crop from the Talented 20 program "because there's a lot of pressure not to ignore students from private schools."
"I think guaranteeing admission to a university system is a fairer approach" than guaranteeing admission to flagship institutions, he said.
Since 1996, top 10 percent students have taken up an increasingly larger percentage of the space at UT and A&M, leaving less room for non-top 10 percent students who have higher SAT scores and GPAs than many automatically admitted students.
In 1996, top 10 percent students, who at the time were not guaranteed admission, accounted for 38 percent of UT 's freshmen class and 43 percent of A&M's class. By 2002, they accounted for 50 percent of the UT freshman class and 48 percent of the A&M class.
UT and A&M have tried to accommodate as many non-top 10 percent students with deserving credentials as they can by increasing class sizes. The UT freshman class was 7,935 last fall, compared with 6,430 in fall 1996. At A&M, the fall 2002 freshman class was 6,949, compared with 6,387 in fall 1996.
Admissions officials say record numbers of applications are mostly responsible for the growth, but the top 10 percent rule has forced them to try to squeeze in more deserving students.
According to many students who haven't gotten into the schools, and their angry parents, the efforts have not been enough. An increasing number of students from high -performing high schools, such as Houston's Bellaire High School, where it is difficult to make the top 10 percent, have in recent years been rejected by the flagship schools despite having high GPAs and high SAT scores.
Historically, UT has allowed rejected students the chance to enter the school by completing 12 semester credit hours of basic courses at the Austin campus the summer of their freshman year and attaining a 2.25 GPA . But because so many non-top 10 percent students entered the program after 1997, UT changed the rules in 2001 to require rejected students to complete 30 semester hours in one year with a 3 .0 GPA at another UT System school.
"I personally do not feel it is fair at all," said Matt Riklin, who is spending his freshman year at UT -San Antonio this academic year because he did not get into UT . He said he graduated in the top 15 percent of his class at Stratford High School in the Spring Branch district and earned an SAT score of about 1200.
"It's been my lifelong dream to go to UT ," said Riklin, who is white. "All my family went there. I've had burnt orange and white bleed through me since I was 2 years old. I do sympathize with the argument that we should help minorities, but it's screwing people like me over."
He said he expects to enter UT next year because he is earning a 4.0 GPA in San Antonio.
But most who try to enter UT through this program haven't been successful.
In 2001, 2,048 students were offered admission into the "coordinated admissions" program, according to Bruce Walker, UT 's director of admissions. Of the 476 who agreed to participate, only 182 made it to UT the following year.
This academic year, 2,287 students were offered a spot in the program, and 800 entered.
The top 10 percent program also raised cries of unfairness at some of UT 's most popular programs, which must give first preference to top 10 percent students. In 2000, the undergraduate business college was completely filled with top 10 percent students, leaving no room for others, no matter how spectacular their credentials.
The following year, UT changed its policy to cap top 10 percent students in particular colleges at 75 percent. In addition to the business college, the College of Communication has also been capped, Walker said.
Blum said UT professors have confided to him that the influx of top 10 percent students has weakened the overall strength of the student body.
"Many faculty members who came to UT with the hope of having a highly qualified and highly motivated student body, only to find themselves teaching in essence 10th- and 11th-grade English," he said.
But several professors interviewed for this story said the top 10 percent program isn't the culprit for why many college students in recent years have not been as prepared as in he past.
"A lot of it has to do with TV and video games," Charney said. "Kids are not reading."
Initially, the top 10 percent law lowered average SAT scores at both UT and A&M because the average test scores of top 10 percent students dipped significantly at both schools. But since non-top 10 percent students have had to earn increasingly higher scores to get in, UT 's average SAT of 1222 last fall for the first time exceeded the average score of 1220 in 1996. At A&M, the average score in 2002 was 1164, compared with an average of 1174 in 1996.
The average freshman GPAs of all minority groups at UT and A&M are about what they were in 1996. Blacks and Hispanics have consistently had lower freshman GPAs than whites and Asian-Americans, and students with lower SAT scores on average have lower freshman GPAs.
Among top 10 percent freshmen at UT in 2001-02, those who scored below 1000 on the SAT had an average GPA of 2.62, and those who scored above averaged 3 .29; the average GPAs at A&M were 2.38 and 3 .02, respectively.
Graduation rates, which are typically calculated over a six-year period, are not available yet for any top 10 percent class. UT has compiled data showing retention rates have so far remained at roughly pre-Hopwood levels. A&M officials have not analyzed the data this way, but admissions director Joe Estrada said he believes the numbers would be similar to UT 's.
UT psychology professor Joe Horn said it is difficult to take such numbers seriously, however, because disadvantaged students, especially if they are top 10 percent students, receive so much help.
UT and A&M have set aside millions in various scholarship funds targeted for disadvantaged students, so many of these students never have to work on campus. They also receive structured help to get them through school and are placed in much smaller freshman classes than the rest of the students.
At UT , Spanish-speaking students who pass a Spanish language test are automatically given 12 semester hours of A in that language. Horn said UT is one of the few major universities in the country to reward bilingual students this way.
Watkins, who has struggled with his grades, said support programs have been crucial to helping him stay in school. He said he is just as capable as many students who earned better test scores, but he just didn't have the same preparation.
"When I came to UT ," he said, "most of the other students had by the eighth grade heard about things I'd never heard of."
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edit: let me add my view.
cuz of the top 10% law, people more qualified are denied admission from the universities, which could be related to aff action.
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"Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity." - Darrel K Royal
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