Should the Top Ten Percent Plan be Repealed?
...ction 54.058(d) for the term or semester to which admitted. One can argue that this rule deprives post-secondary institutions the right to exercise control over their admissions. In the fall semester of 2003, out of the seventy-five percent of Texas students admitted to the University of Texas at Austin, sixty-nine percent of those were admitted on account of the Top Ten Percent Rule (http://texastop10.princeton.edu/publicity/ Hispanic-Outlook050304.pdf). As a result of this rule, UT at Austin is left with little choice in choosing their student body. Also this recently-passed rule lowers the objective standards of the students. Top Ten Percent Plan supporters can say that those admitted under this single-criterion policy earn better grade point averages than those not admitted under the plan. However, this is misleading; the point of comparison should be between those students in the top ten percent , a minority to be sure, who would not have been admitted were test scores, and other variables, such as essays, considered and the students who would have been admitted in their place. The latter group would probably include students from some of the state’s most competitive high schools like Bellaire and Westlake who scored as high as 1400 on their SAT, but just missed the top ten percent. Meanwhile, students from some inner city and rural high schools are admitted under the rule with SAT scores as low as 800 (a score which indicates they will have considerable difficulty doing work at the University of Texas at Austin or Texas A & M University at College Station) (http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2003/02/04/news/7170.shtml). There is also a increasingly pronounced trend of Top Ten “Percenters” having an average SAT score lower than that of their non-Top Ten Percent counterparts. Top Ten Percent enrollees had a mean average SAT score of 1223, down thirty points from the year 1996 (one year before the rule took effect); non-Top Ten Percent enrolled freshmen had an average SAT score of 1257, up from 1197 in 1996 year (http://texastop10.princeton.edu/publicity.htm). The simple fact is that all high schools are not created equal. It is much more difficult to be in the top ten percent of some high schools that it is for others, due largely to the makeup of the student body. Class rank, it must be remembered, is a relative criterion and therefore the composition of the group to which a student is being compared has as much influence on his rank as his own absolute performance. Anecdotal evidence of perverse incentives created by the Top Ten Percent Plan has been mentioned in the media. Specifically, this includes: 1) Students and parents have no reason to attend rigorous high schools if they aspire to a state university in Texas. 2) Schools have no reason to nurture their top students to get into state universities. 3) There is no reason other than personal ambition to take a arduous high school curriculum or try to do well on standardized tests if on is in his Top Ten Percent and are looking to attend a state university (http://texas top10.-princeton.edu/publicity/AffirmativeActionAlternative.pdf). With this rule, many top universities take a hit when it comes to their diversity i...