500,000ags said:
Where is the data that kids from small schools don't fair well at A&M? You keep mentioning your wife, and that's not data, that's anecdotal. I can literally name 15-20 kids that did more than fine.
As I mentioned, small school kids tend to do ok at A&M from my experience because they are such a strong cultural fit and many come from 2 parent households with strong support. The kids having issues tend to be those who go to very poor and very large HS's in the Valley or in urban areas where the schools barely meet standards (or don't) and have only 20% or so (sometimes less) of grads even considered "college ready". You end up with a class of 800 with 80 as auto admits to A&M and A&M is often falling all over itself offering scholarship money to them because they are almost always low income and most are first gen. Some of those kids will do great but many are going to get absolutely hammered when they hit some Freshman classes at A&M.
If you are looking for hard data I don't know how to find it, A&M certainly isn't publicizing it as it reflects poorly on the school and it goes against the grain on everything they push. Much easier to find ways to push those kids to easier majors that are less likely to end up with a good job when they graduate or to just quietly watch them fail. I can just speak to what I have consistently seen at A&M.
BTW, my eldest son got into Galveston (later offered System Admit to CS) and was just outside the Top 50% at his excellent Suburban HS because he had the audacity to get a few B's and to not take all AP Classes but rather Dual Credit (entered with 15 hours). He's taking 17 hours as a first semester Freshman and is on track for a 4.0. He sees the same thing in terms of the kids who are struggling vs those who are flourishing. He wasn't one of the "smart kids" in HS but even among his friends virtually all of them are crushing it grade wise and consistently think college is easier than HS.
The problem is this idea that you can make up for 12 years of educational quality by just putting them all together with kids that have been in strong college prep going back to Elementary School where they stress study habits from the beginning. Some kids absolutely can swim when thrown in the deep water but the odds are against them, especially when they are up against kids with so much more prep, are simply less. It's lunacy to penalize better prepared kids out of a desire for social justice.
As I said though it's very hard to find data because schools don't want to emphasize it. No one wants to show that minorities especially are doing poorly at A&M and the bad HS's tend to be heavily minority. The problem isn't skin color at all btw, it is parental involvement. If you have involved parents the odds or academic success are higher than pretty much any other factor. Life isn't fair but denying reality doesn't help.
"The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help."
Ronald Reagan
