C@LAg said:

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at least they have some standards. and are taking some corrective actions.

we are nothing more than a diploma mill, looking for ways to enroll even more.

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you say that and yet most who bemoan this wouldn't be admitted under the current standard. Now if you want to focus that angst on the addition of liberal arts degrees, I'm with you brotha

inconvenient truth said:

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rocky the dog said:

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**** like this is why the chinamen are liking their chops

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we call them " orientals" now. Sheesh.

What an F'ing joke. These people are so mentally ill they no clue they are destroying their brand reputation that they spend the rest of the year trying to build up every single day day!! If I was rejected from there from that same class, I would have sued. Also, would have been funny if he was white. Of course the old BLM 100 times on an application trick only works if you have the right amount of melanin.

zephyr88 said:

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Refresh me... why do we care what t.u. does?

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Well, our Marxist finally did the right thing by publishing this info and hopefully shedding light on the stupidity/insanity of these decision by bringing back standards for admissions. It is a good thing and will guide or hopefully pressure other re education camps to follow suit !!!!

We have a daughter currently in the 8th grade so please excuse my ignorance. We just completed her HS planning session and we were told top 10% are automatically admitted to A&M and top 6% to tu. Does A&M currently not require SAT scores? How will this new change affect both schools going forward?

Mind you, at this point she wants to attend A&M (although her dad went to tu) and so she's elected all AP classes next year to even have the chance to attend either school.

Their alternative admissions standards were political garbage based on equity, of course. Wastes resources and ultimately harms us all.

Swan Song said:

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We have a daughter currently in the 8th grade so please excuse my ignorance. We just completed her HS planning session and we were told top 10% are automatically admitted to A&M and top 6% to tu. Does A&M currently not require SAT scores? How will this new change affect both schools going forward?

Mind you, at this point she wants to attend A&M (although her dad went to tu) and so she's elected all AP classes next year to even have the chance to attend either school.

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Currently SAT is optional. This was cause plandemic. It will be required next year.

Top 10% yes, but Engineering acceptance is a holistic review. Top 10 does not guarantee Engineering acceptance.

It is an interesting but unsurprising statistic.

I agree with others that I want to know how this correlates to the 4/5 year education, whether they finish degree or not.

techno-ag said:

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SAT strongly correlates with freshman success. Decades of data.

Asians and whites statistically score higher on the SAT. Blacks lowest. Decades of data.

So obviously the SAT is racially biased and an obstacle to diversity. Decades of … well, just trust us. Diversity is important.

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Diversity is so important that HBCUs like Prairie View are making no effort whatsoever to recruit or otherwise encourage more whites and Asians to go there. I guess they are diverse enough?

How has the growth at A&M compare to the growth of the state? Being a state funded university, A&M has a responsibility to increase admissions to meet the increasing number of students seeking admission. I wonder how many top students not admitted to A&M because of lack of funding or not meeting the academic requirements go to out of state school and not come back?

Honestly, tu isn't that hard once you're in. Neither is A&M. One grade point could be the difference between all A's and all B's. A student with above an 1100 SAT shouldn't have a hard time at tu or A&M if they study and work hard.

Was everyone required to report a score even if it wasn't used for admissions? Just wondering how this data was collected. My niece was accepted to A&M this year as a top 10% student but didn't report her test scores at all.

For better or worse the testing system at every university is (or should be) based upon examinations. Those who learn how to take a test (SAT for example) will always do better than those who can't take a test. This is the truth and, for now, there is no good alternative to testing.

inconvenient truth said:

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rocky the dog said:

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**** like this is why the chinamen are liking their chops

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There is about to be fewer of them to lick their chops to begin with.

APHIS AG said:

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rocky the dog said:

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That "path" may work for DEI universities but then after, the real world starts

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Have seen the "real world" these days?

rocky the dog said:

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I wonder how he's doing and what degree he's getting. I remember when this happened, the left media praised his brilliance.

Basically like Bart Simpson having to write on the chalkboard.

I work in graduate admissions. The trend I am seeing for grad school is toward holistic admissions where points are assigned for your attributes, experiences, and academic metrics. Whether or not the school takes SAT/GRE you need to boost the other attributes other than race and other immutable characteristics right now and play the game so their app gets considered.

The strategy you as parents should start employing is to help your kid identify opportunities to develop attributes and experiences that demonstrate qualities like resilience, grit, commitment, motivation, and overcoming obstacles.

Showing these qualities developed over time can growth potential and "grit" which can help weight the evaluation in case your child is lacking points for not being a minority, military, first gen, poor, etc.

The experiences/attributes do not have to be a lifestyle/grievance-based ex: "coming out as gay to my parents" but can demonstrate things like overcoming something difficult or solving a problem that could help others. Or, taking on a solo challenge to prove that you can do something, even if it is mundane.

Starting early to find things for your kids to work on establishes a longer term dedication to service rather than doing something for 2 hours at the food bank for the application.

I hope that is helpful for some of you as you assist navigating the coming years with your teens.

Also, help your kids learn to write!!!! Zomg it is so bad out there.

How do you assign numeric objective points to subjective criteria ?

Quote:

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Also, help your kids learn to write!!!!

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First person, active voice.

CDUB98 said:

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Quote:

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Also, help your kids learn to write!!!!

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First person, active voice.

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You don't just teach kids learn to write.

You first teach/force them to read first. Then writing comes naturally as your kids become voracious readers.

C@LAg said:

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zephyr88 said:

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Refresh me... why do we care what t.u. does?

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because in this case, they identified a problem with their admissions and are correcting it for the better by placing more focus back on standardized testing and grades.

while we are accepting every tom, dick and harry that basically has a pulse. we should ALSO be working to improve the quality, not quantity, of students at A&M.

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This is simply untrue in regards to A&M and I know of so many stories of extremely bright and gifted kids that couldn't get into A&M and have rolled out 4.0s elsewhere. It's incredibly frustrating. Had a good friend who just had a daughter that was accepted to Texas and has been on pins and needles and his daughter finally got Bliinn Team.

The reason that A&M's Admission rate is so high is because they count System Admits in the number as well as Blinn Team and Gateway which is unlike other schools. System Admits where a kid can go to A&M Kingsville for a year and apply for admission essentially. I have no problem with that process but those aren't regular admissions. The "real" admissions rate at A&M is around 20-25% based on the statistics I have seen during a Spend the Night with the Corps presentation where they had the actual applicant numbers and the breakdown by who was accepted in what fashion (Regular, Blinn, Gateway, System).

A&M simply doesn't care about ratings or these stats at all. Every other school tries to game the system and A&M seems to go out of it's way to look like it is easier to get in than it actually is because they don't want kids to feel like they shouldn't bother applying.

Emotional Support Cobra said:

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The strategy you as parents should start employing is to help your kid identify opportunities to develop attributes and experiences that demonstrate qualities like resilience, grit, commitment, motivation, and overcoming obstacles.

Showing these qualities developed over time can growth potential and "grit" which can help weight the evaluation in case your child is lacking points for not being a minority, military, first gen, poor, etc.

The experiences/attributes do not have to be a lifestyle/grievance-based ex: "coming out as gay to my parents" but can demonstrate things like overcoming something difficult or solving a problem that could help others. Or, taking on a solo challenge to prove that you can do something, even if it is mundane.

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This sounds great on becoming a wholesome good human being citizen....

But what's this got to do with getting a Ph.D in Physics or Math??

Holistic = political. You can admit it. We all know it.

Statistically there are two things that matter with STEM education, and really most formal education:

IQ (or equivalent analysis of intellectual capacity)
Conscientiousness (how diligent one will be in learning and developing)

No other aspect registers even close to these factors and none of them are statistically significant factors for sure. If you evaluate these two things, you will get the most capable students with the most success potential.

It really is that simple. People just rage that the outcomes aren't distributed as politically as they would wish them to be when optimizing for the only two real success factors that actually matter.

AggieDruggist89 said:

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CDUB98 said:

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Quote:

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Also, help your kids learn to write!!!!

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First person, active voice.

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You don't just teach kids learn to write.

You first teach/force them to read first. Then writing comes naturally as your kids become voracious readers.

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I was about to mention the same. DeBakey High School has a must read book list that's part of their entrance requirement.

LOYAL AG said:

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C@LAg said:

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Teslag said:

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C@LAg said:

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at least they have some standards. and are taking some corrective actions.

we are nothing more than a diploma mill, looking for ways to enroll even more.

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It's harder to get into A&M than ever before.

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yes, but what good does that do when enrollment continues to increase while tu is working to cut theirs down and require more stringent guidelines for admission.

correct me if I am wrong, but A&M still does that "top 10% garbage" while tu has cranked theirs to 6 or 7%.

that is a smarter choice than just increasing numbers because we have land to add more buildings.

the quality and value of an A&M degree is not commensurate to the number of people on campus.

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Not sure you understand the difference between the two schools. Texas is down to "top 6 or 7 percent" because the campus has nowhere to grow. They are landlocked and not growing their student body.

Meanwhile A&M is the only other tier 1 public school in the state and has plenty of room to grow which means we are going to do so. We aren't accepting everyone, that's factually incorrect. Our standards are high yet we provide multiple opportunities for kids below those standards to prove themselves. As a state university in a rapidly growing state I'd say we do a good job balancing our mandate to educate the citizens of the state with the need to maintain high standards.

Where the problem actually exists is in how the state has structured higher ed. There are two tier 1 and one can't grow. The state needs to invest heavily in 3-4 other schools and elevate those to tier 1 to relieve the pressure on A&M. That's the only way we're going to see our enrollment level out.

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Texas is solving their issue by investing heavily in their other System schools to build them up. UT Dallas for instance is probably the 3rd Best Public School in the State now, especially if you kid wants to do Comp Sci. UTSA and UT Arlington have improved dramatically as well and they have grown the others. Essentially they are modeling the UC System with Austin being Berkeley.

A&M is different. The gap in our System schools and CS is just too great for the most part so they are using those schools as feeders through the System Admit. Those are still good schools but they aren't trying to be Tier 1 Research Universities like UT Dallas is for instance, they are solid regional Universities essentially and they tend to cater to rural students or those who are simply wanting to go to school closer to home that live in the Valley or along the Coast for instance. Galveston is an exception to that as it is actually part of CS technically but it is small (about 2400 students). A&M also just operates differently as we have about 92% of our students from Texas which is just an incredibly high number, that's partly why we don't really care about ratings. We don't really market the same way many other schools do that should be comparable to us. There really isn't another school in the US that does things quite like we do as we have so many unique assets and a different mission for good and bad.

Data is overwhelming that standardized tests are much better than high school GPA at predicting college and work success - but the results they produce aren't satisfactory to admissions boards so they are discounted. The SAT/ACT should be the PRIMARY factor in college admissions.

I know several people who were top 10% in their class but made a mid/low 20 score on the ACT. None of them were particularly smart but they got into A&M and texas over people 5x smarter than them. It is insanely easy to cheat in the majority of public high schools by the way.

MouthBQ98 said:

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Holistic = political. You can admit it. We all know it.

Statistically there are two things that matter with STEM education, and really most formal education:

IQ (or equivalent analysis of intellectual capacity)
Conscientiousness (how diligent one will be in learning and developing)

No other aspect registers even close to these factors and none of them are statistically significant factors for sure. If you evaluate these two things, you will get the most capable students with the most success potential.

It really is that simple. People just rage that the outcomes aren't distributed as politically as they would wish them to be when optimizing for the only two real success factors that actually matter.

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Admission committees at universities appear to be filled with below average IQ emotional woke misfit counselors who believe they're way smarter and more important than they actually are. They foam at the mouth picking same type of kids to attend their institution thinking they're changing the world. Just ****ing use the standardized tests. SAT/ACT and AP scores.

Muy said:

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rocky the dog said:

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I wonder how he's doing and what degree he's getting. I remember when this happened, the left media praised his brilliance.

Basically like Bart Simpson Ralph Wiggum having to write on the chalkboard.

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Agreed. They are the part of the intersectional left's religious priesthood in Academia, looking for the most ideal converts and making sure there aren't deviations from the orthodoxy within academic institutions. They are LA graduates themselves by and large and have been throughly possessed by the ideological indoctrination into the studies pseudoscience by and large.

They believe they are doing social justice and good, so they have no concept of the true consequences of their actions in the bigger scope.

I think SATs or ACT are important for admissions, and I do not think they should be done away with, but I was not a good standard test taker myself. Regular classes regular exams. I was fine but all that ABCD, A and C but not B or none of the above/all of the above or not a crap just irritated the bejesus out of me. And yes, I realized regular test had that sometimes too but it seemed like the big ones were even more annoying.

I did always do well in math and problem-solving though.

Conversely, some people can do great on their SATs and exams, but have no common sense, and don't function well out of an academic setting.

Top marks on a standardized tests does not necessarily mean you will do well or poorly in college.

I'm glad I went to school while they still basically taught you stuff, you pass exams and then you moved to the next grade. The educational system has gone so overboard with all these things are trying to do to help people. They've actually just hurt the profession.

MouthBQ98 said:

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Holistic = political. You can admit it. We all know it.

Statistically there are two things that matter with STEM education, and really most formal education:

IQ (or equivalent analysis of intellectual capacity)
Conscientiousness (how diligent one will be in learning and developing)

No other aspect registers even close to these factors and none of them are statistically significant factors for sure. If you evaluate these two things, you will get the most capable students with the most success potential.

It really is that simple. People just rage that the outcomes aren't distributed as politically as they would wish them to be when optimizing for the only two real success factors that actually matter.

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I used to feel the same way but having my second kid going through the process (2 very different paths) this really isn't quite accurate. There are a lot of factors to consider.

1. The internet and Common App have changed everything. The Common App is a blessing and a curse. What it has done though is make it so that high performing kids will apply to 20 plus schools with minimal effort, they just have to pay the app fee. Even more modest performing kids often do similar. Used to be rare a kid would apply to more than 4 or 5 schools. Thus schools get far more applicants and many have excellent scores as kids are taught to apply to "Reach" schools, "Likely" schools, and "Safety" schools so they can have lots of options. More and more kids don't care about going out of state or far from home either or at least the idea of it. For instance when I went to school it would have been hard to figure out how to even apply to some schools, you would have had to write to them or find literature somewhere. There sure as hell wasn't a bevy of information at your fingertips with all of that as well as countless blogs and videos telling you what to do to increase your odds or acceptance.

2. The SAT/ACT has become more and more a matter of gaming it. If you have a quality tutor and know the tricks you can dramatically increase your scores. Schools also use "Super Score" now where you can take the SAT for instance 4 times and only use your highest Math and highest Verbal. You have some kids that invest heavy time and money into that and others that don't. Thus it has devalued the test as a comparison tool, it has value but isn't the same as it was. Top 25 Schools have mountains of applications that are 1500+ SAT scores.

3. The rest of the process is also being gamed. You can watch the videos and read the blogs and learn how to stand out and what schools are looking for. Thus you have to work harder to stand out. To be honest another factor within this is we have so many more Asian kids in the US now with parents who immigrated here. They start prepping their kids for college basically from the time they can read. I know my son's HS has 3 kids who are all taking AP Calculus as a Freshman in HS (and acing it). They also do other activities to boost their resume. It's just at a level many don't understand from a cultural perspective.

4. HS GPA has become inflated or almost impossible to compare. So many schools have 4.0 students or close to it in droves. They also weight GPAs differently school by school in terms of AP and Honors. Universities literally look at each batch of students from an individual school to compare them to each other and put context on the school because the GPA is almost meaningless otherwise.

5. So what "Holistic" is targeting is to look at the bigger picture. For instance Grades and SAT count but they are more of a "Pass/Fail" in terms of getting over the bar or they give a kid extra points or detract points. Still they are just part of the application. The thing schools value the most now is rigor. Have you taken the hardest classes available to you? How did you do in those classes? You can't really "game" an AP Calculus exam. If you go to a top HS and take on level classes that's going to detract. If you go to a terrible HS with no AP classes offered you aren't "penalized" either. Schools don't want every kid to look the same. Sure race and sex are part of that but it's more about how they don't want a school that is 80% White and Asian males majoring in Comp Sci for instance. They need balance.

6. The other thing schools are REALLY looking for now is your "story". You want to major in Comp Sci? Great. Have you been taking lots of AP classes in STEM? Are you doing programming or taking Comp Sci classes in school and out? Are you involved in clubs that relate to it? Have you got any interesting projects you have done? If you want to major in Business are you in DECA or other similar clubs? Have you tried to start your own business or had some relevant work, even at a very basic level? Are your essays talking about why you want to choose that as a major and how you have a passion for it? Were you a leader in those organizations or just a member? They don 't want to see someone who just joined a bunch of clubs but didn't do anything in them. They want to see that you chose clubs you were interested in and were very involved, depth not breadth. I think they overvalue service to an extent but there are worse things. They want to see you have done things to "give back" which is fine but it's probably valued a bit too much as a qualifier. The best thing of course is when you can combine that. For instance if you want to major in Bio/Pre Med doing volunteer work relating to health care or similar.

7. Much of the bias in Admissions simply comes from the fact most of the people in Admissions fit the same profile. The person reading your essay is likely a 20 something Mid Level Admissions person sitting on their couch reading 50 Essays that day. They likely were a Liberal Arts Major that had a student job while in school working for the University and then got hired on in Admissions and are working their way up the chain. Many write well and love to read but inevitably they tend to have similar backgrounds and are looking for something that interests them and for a way to stand out. They don't like hearing the same story over and over. Of course most are liberals as well so they will be more interested in essays that interest them even if they are trained to not be biased, they are still human.

8. Another trend I am seeing is kids that get accepted to Texas (and likely soon A&M) on Auto Admit but don't get into the college they wanted. For instance the kid who was Top 6% but didn't get in to Texas Engineering or McCombs. Why? They had the grades but they didn't have the "Story". They just focused on their class rank or SAT but didn't have much else to support why they wanted to be an Engineer and they didn't explain it well. The school still will accept them but they don't get the major they want.

zephyr88 said:

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Refresh me... why do we care what t.u. does?

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They are our SEC bro.

Cobra39

The standardized tests are near proxies for IQ tests. Yes, you can practice for the types of questions and test format do there is more variability, but precision isn't quite so important as having a ballpark idea of intellectual capacity.

The other major factor is conscientiousness, and it is very important. Intelligent people with no discipline or motivation can still fail out. Conscientious students with maybe less intellect but that do the work can be highly successful education wise if the subject material isn't extremely intellectually tasking like advanced mathematics or complex physics, with abstract concepts, etc.

It is those who have this combination that do best, but lacking seriously in either is a formula for failure in a challenging academic environment. That brings us to grade inflation and systematic watering down of rigor in the academic environment over time.

techno-ag said:

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SAT strongly correlates with freshman success. Decades of data.

Asians and whites statistically score higher on the SAT. Blacks lowest. Decades of data.

So obviously the SAT is racially biased and an obstacle to diversity. Decades of … well, just trust us. Diversity is important.

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What exactly is the correlation?

I took the SAT. Twice, in fact. The fact that I took it didn't make my freshman year go any better. The last SAT I took was a full year before I enrolled in college for the first time.

What SPECIFICALLY is it about taking the SAT that makes one do better in class? Without answering that question, you can't have a correlation. At least, not a direct one.

There is something else at play here.

annie88 said:

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I did always do did well in math and problem-solving though.

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How was your reading?