The School Newspaper of Tomball High School

The Cougar Claw

The School Newspaper of Tomball High School

The Cougar Claw

Reader Survey

Top 10% rule narrows college options

More and more high school students who crave the culture, brand name, sprawling campuses, and the serious football of a big state university are meeting their needs outside the Lone Star State. Conventional wisdom states Texas’ “top 10%” rule, which guarantees top-ranked high school students admission to any state university, is a brain-drain that forces students with “not so good grades” into academic exile. It is not really a top 10% problem; it is a University of Texas at Austin problem.

UT is so popular and yields such a powerful brand that too many students long to be Longhorns. In the past, those in the top 10% won automatic admission to UT. However, starting in 2011, the top 10% will be further shaved down to the top 8% at UT Austin. Those few positions left will become even more difficult to obtain.

This year, UT received a record 31,000 applications from high school seniors. Out of the 30,000, only 14,000 were accepted. The unaccepted have the choices of Texas A&M, Texas Tech, and the University of North Texas among many others, but before an increase numbers of students have left for Oklahoma State, Louisiana State, and the University of Arkansas.

Texas lawmakers, business owners, and others worry that these students who take their talents somewhere else will never return to Texas. Others say those worries are highly exaggerated. In 2006, about 7,800 Texas students left the state for public universities elsewhere. That is up 4,900 students in 1998. Meanwhile, Texas public universities acquired only 3,900 students from other states in 2006, up from 2,900 students in 1998, and the loss for Texas is growing annually.

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The state searches for high school graduates who stay in Texas for college, but not those who head out of state. It is hard to know the hot spots of college emigration but the more vocal complaints about the top 10% law come from competitive middle class neighborhood high schools where tales about the student in the top 11% who is heading to an Ivy League school and not UT are being told.

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Top 10% rule narrows college options