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MaysGrad09
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UT System Chancellor McRaven Blasts Top 10 Percent Rule

Why isn't Sharp speaking out on this?? Why is Kyle Field and Chip Brown the only things he talks about??
Lateralus Ag
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AG
quote:
UT System Chancellor McRaven Blasts Top 10 Percent Rule

Why isn't Sharp speaking out on this?? Why is Kyle Field and Chip Brown the only things he talks about??


You know the answer to that question.
SEC 2012
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quote:
UT System Chancellor McRaven Blasts Top 10 Percent Rule

Why isn't Sharp speaking out on this?? Why is Kyle Field and Chip Brown the only things he talks about??

Because he's a child.
SEC 2012
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quote:
quote:
So UT will eventually have the highest ranked public university in every major Texas metro and A&M will have a campus in McAllen.

That pretty much sums up the leadership of the two systems.
Science Denier
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AG
quote:
UT System Chancellor McRaven Blasts Top 10 Percent Rule

Why isn't Sharp speaking out on this?? Why is Kyle Field and Chip Brown the only things he talks about??
Why should he speak out about this? Trying to make entrance to a PUBLIC school as hard as Ivy League schools is flat stupid. It doesn't "diminish" the value of your degree. It may make professors think their own value is improved, but that's about it. And, as a taxpayer in this state, if tsips want to limit their political power in this state, more power to them. A&M has played second fiddle to tu for too long due to their numbers in this state. Pumping out more excellent Aggies every year is a good thing.

I don't give two ****s what some elitist professor thinks of himself.
biobioprof
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quote:
quote:
UT System Chancellor McRaven Blasts Top 10 Percent Rule

Why isn't Sharp speaking out on this?? Why is Kyle Field and Chip Brown the only things he talks about??
Why should he speak out about this? Trying to make entrance to a PUBLIC school as hard as Ivy League schools is flat stupid. It doesn't "diminish" the value of your degree. It may make professors think their own value is improved, but that's about it. And, as a taxpayer in this state, if tsips want to limit their political power in this state, more power to them. A&M has played second fiddle to tu for too long due to their numbers in this state. Pumping out more excellent Aggies every year is a good thing.

I don't give two ****s what some elitist professor thinks of himself.
Not sure why you are blaming some elitist prof for this. Speaking as a not-so-elitist prof, the really elite faculty are not as concerned about the top 10% stuff as the parents of the suburban snowflakes who aren't getting admitted. In part this is because a fair number of the faculty who get recruited in competition with the Harvards and Stanfords at a place like Texas or Texas A&M have very little direct contact with the subset of the top 10%ers who are not ready for college, and some of them have no real contact with undergrads at all. They care more about the grad students and postdocs they can recruit.

There are at least two distinct issues related to admissions and the top 10% in my view. The first is just the math of the raw numbers and the optimal size of the universities. The main valid reason to get rid of it, in my view, is that as the denominator grows, it may be impossible to scale the flagship schools to accommodate everyone who is admitted and wants to come. If the State of Texas had gone the way of California wrt the UC System (not on everything, of course) and aimed to have more flagship-quality schools, then the load would be spread out over the state. But it seems to me that the history has made the quality difference between Austin and Arlington, or College Station and Kingsville, much greater than between Berkeley and the other UC System schools.

The second issue is how to determine the mix of admits within whatever you set as the numerical goal. IMO, you can fix the first problem within the general philosophy of the top 10% rule without doing what tu wants in scrapping it altogether. Just float the percentage. Say that X% of the total admits to the A&M and Texas will come from the top students in each HS. If that goes down only to the top 5%, fine. If it extends beyond 10%, fine. That's how I would handle it. To me, the value of diversity includes exposing kids from small farming communities to urban and suburban kids, not just having suburban kids with different skin colors or surnames. Now, I recognize that this goal might not be met if the incoming freshman classes in Austin and College Station turn into just the children of the Asian immigrant MDs in those communities, but I would be want to see data saying that was happening before worrying about that possibility.

It has always seemed to me that the pushback against the top 10% approach at tu and other places is more about control than diversity. And it has the goal of being like what I once saw written about diversity in Bill Clinton's cabinet: in addition to white male liberal Ivy League lawyers, there would be a diverse mix of liberal Ivy League lawyers of all genders, sexual orientations, and races.
mmh
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AG
quote:
UT System Chancellor McRaven Blasts Top 10 Percent Rule

Why isn't Sharp speaking out on this?? Why is Kyle Field and Chip Brown the only things he talks about??

Because it doesn't matter what Chancellor McRaven says.
Lateralus Ag
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AG
quote:
quote:
quote:
UT System Chancellor McRaven Blasts Top 10 Percent Rule

Why isn't Sharp speaking out on this?? Why is Kyle Field and Chip Brown the only things he talks about??
Why should he speak out about this? Trying to make entrance to a PUBLIC school as hard as Ivy League schools is flat stupid. It doesn't "diminish" the value of your degree. It may make professors think their own value is improved, but that's about it. And, as a taxpayer in this state, if tsips want to limit their political power in this state, more power to them. A&M has played second fiddle to tu for too long due to their numbers in this state. Pumping out more excellent Aggies every year is a good thing.

I don't give two ****s what some elitist professor thinks of himself.
Not sure why you are blaming some elitist prof for this. Speaking as a not-so-elitist prof, the really elite faculty are not as concerned about the top 10% stuff as the parents of the suburban snowflakes who aren't getting admitted. In part this is because a fair number of the faculty who get recruited in competition with the Harvards and Stanfords at a place like Texas or Texas A&M have very little direct contact with the subset of the top 10%ers who are not ready for college, and some of them have no real contact with undergrads at all. They care more about the grad students and postdocs they can recruit.

There are at least two distinct issues related to admissions and the top 10% in my view. The first is just the math of the raw numbers and the optimal size of the universities. The main valid reason to get rid of it, in my view, is that as the denominator grows, it may be impossible to scale the flagship schools to accommodate everyone who is admitted and wants to come. If the State of Texas had gone the way of California wrt the UC System (not on everything, of course) and aimed to have more flagship-quality schools, then the load would be spread out over the state. But it seems to me that the history has made the quality difference between Austin and Arlington, or College Station and Kingsville, much greater than between Berkeley and the other UC System schools.

The second issue is how to determine the mix of admits within whatever you set as the numerical goal. IMO, you can fix the first problem within the general philosophy of the top 10% rule without doing what tu wants in scrapping it altogether. Just float the percentage. Say that X% of the total admits to the A&M and Texas will come from the top students in each HS. If that goes down only to the top 5%, fine. If it extends beyond 10%, fine. That's how I would handle it. To me, the value of diversity includes exposing kids from small farming communities to urban and suburban kids, not just having suburban kids with different skin colors or surnames. Now, I recognize that this goal might not be met if the incoming freshman classes in Austin and College Station turn into just the children of the Asian immigrant MDs in those communities, but I would be want to see data saying that was happening before worrying about that possibility.

It has always seemed to me that the pushback against the top 10% approach at tu and other places is more about control than diversity. And it has the goal of being like what I once saw written about diversity in Bill Clinton's cabinet: in addition to white male liberal Ivy League lawyers, there would be a diverse mix of liberal Ivy League lawyers of all genders, sexual orientations, and races.


This guy should be our next Chancellor.


Seriously.
FishPondFisherman
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quote:
quote:
UT System Chancellor McRaven Blasts Top 10 Percent Rule

Why isn't Sharp speaking out on this?? Why is Kyle Field and Chip Brown the only things he talks about??

Because it doesn't matter what Chancellor McRaven says.

how is it that you believe what he says does not matter when UT has already been able to get the top 10% rule down to 8% or even 7% some years and to fix the % of auto admits under the rule to a set % of the total freshman class for UT

this while A&M actually willfully passed on even trying to do so when UT made the change in the past because A&M wants to open the doors to all the 10% students they can without concern for quality or consistency of outcome
biobioprof
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quote:
quote:
quote:
UT System Chancellor McRaven Blasts Top 10 Percent Rule

Why isn't Sharp speaking out on this?? Why is Kyle Field and Chip Brown the only things he talks about??

Because it doesn't matter what Chancellor McRaven says.

how is it that you believe what he says does not matter when UT has already been able to get the top 10% rule down to 8% or even 7% some years and to fix the % of auto admits under the rule to a set % of the total freshman class for UT

this while A&M actually willfully passed on even trying to do so when UT made the change in the past because A&M wants to open the doors to all the 10% students they can without concern for quality or consistency of outcome
All the relevant legislation happened long before McRaven was Chancellor. It's hard to tell from what I could find from a quick Google whether the driving force was lobbying from tu or from pressure from the voters in the districts represented by the sponsor (Florence Shapiro) and various cosponsors (Nelson, Dan Patrick, Seliger and Wentworth). Color me shocked to discover that Shapiro represents Plano.

In terms of the political action from tu officials, it's not clear how much was led from the Chancellor's office vs the President.

As you probably know, the reason this is in the news now is that in order to get the exemption, they had to continue race-based affirmative action programs that are currently being challenged again in the Supreme Court. From the reporting I've seen, the 2009 law is written so that the exemption goes away if SCOTUS strikes down what they've been doing in affirmative action.

A&M officials made the decision that the top 10% rule was better than having admissions officials do race based scoring of applicants. I tend to agree that the more objective measures, while flawed, are better than systems that give rise to stories like this.

One other thing I found interesting was that tu claimed that they needed to go below the top 10% to fill certain majors like Geosciences and Education, where the top 10%ers didn't want to go. It would be interesting to know if they actually used the exemption in that way and if it was successful, given the way students try to game the system. We see versions of this where students declare for our major only because they think it gives them the best chance of switching to ENGR after Engineering is full. This sucks on many levels, IMO, and it's not clear to us if it even works.
FishPondFisherman
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quote:
quote:
quote:
quote:
UT System Chancellor McRaven Blasts Top 10 Percent Rule

Why isn't Sharp speaking out on this?? Why is Kyle Field and Chip Brown the only things he talks about??

Because it doesn't matter what Chancellor McRaven says.

how is it that you believe what he says does not matter when UT has already been able to get the top 10% rule down to 8% or even 7% some years and to fix the % of auto admits under the rule to a set % of the total freshman class for UT

this while A&M actually willfully passed on even trying to do so when UT made the change in the past because A&M wants to open the doors to all the 10% students they can without concern for quality or consistency of outcome
All the relevant legislation happened long before McRaven was Chancellor. It's hard to tell from what I could find from a quick Google whether the driving force was lobbying from tu or from pressure from the voters in the districts represented by the sponsor (Florence Shapiro) and various cosponsors (Nelson, Dan Patrick, Seliger and Wentworth). Color me shocked to discover that Shapiro represents Plano.

In terms of the political action from tu officials, it's not clear how much was led from the Chancellor's office vs the President.

As you probably know, the reason this is in the news now is that in order to get the exemption, they had to continue race-based affirmative action programs that are currently being challenged again in the Supreme Court. From the reporting I've seen, the 2009 law is written so that the exemption goes away if SCOTUS strikes down what they've been doing in affirmative action.

A&M officials made the decision that the top 10% rule was better than having admissions officials do race based scoring of applicants. I tend to agree that the more objective measures, while flawed, are better than systems that give rise to stories like this.

One other thing I found interesting was that tu claimed that they needed to go below the top 10% to fill certain majors like Geosciences and Education, where the top 10%ers didn't want to go. It would be interesting to know if they actually used the exemption in that way and if it was successful, given the way students try to game the system. We see versions of this where students declare for our major only because they think it gives them the best chance of switching to ENGR after Engineering is full. This sucks on many levels, IMO, and it's not clear to us if it even works.
if you paid attention at all you would know the proposal was put forth by UT and pushed for by UT not anyone in the legislature and both the Austin president and the System were for it

and what would s a sponsor being from Plano have to do with it the fact is the 10% rule works against districts like Plano and going below 10% to 7% or 8% only works against them more

A&M made the decision to keep the 10% rule because they wanted more students it had nothing to do with race based admissions it had to do with warm bodies
Captain Augustus McCrae
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So UT"s chancellor is trying to improve their academic standing while A&M's chancellor is touting the size of their football stadium? Color me shocked.

At the end of the day, this falls on the board of regents for hiring Sharp and then for extending his contract. A&M gets the leadership it deserves.
biobioprof
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and what would s a sponsor being from Plano have to do with it the fact is the 10% rule works against districts like Plano and going below 10% to 7% or 8% only works against them more

A&M made the decision to keep the 10% rule because they wanted more students it had nothing to do with race based admissions it had to do with warm bodies

The Plano sponsor was of the tu exception to the top 10% rule, not the original top 10% law. She wanted the cap on top 10%ers to be even lower, but the final number was a compromise.

A&M's decision on the top 10% was absolutely about race based admissions after Hopwood; I remember Gates talking about it. Enrollment can be increased without the top 10% rule just by admissions decisions.
FishPondFisherman
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and what would s a sponsor being from Plano have to do with it the fact is the 10% rule works against districts like Plano and going below 10% to 7% or 8% only works against them more

A&M made the decision to keep the 10% rule because they wanted more students it had nothing to do with race based admissions it had to do with warm bodies

The Plano sponsor was of the tu exception to the top 10% rule, not the original top 10% law. She wanted the cap on top 10%ers to be even lower, but the final number was a compromise.

A&M's decision on the top 10% was absolutely about race based admissions after Hopwood; I remember Gates talking about it. Enrollment can be increased without the top 10% rule just by admissions decisions.
I understand the representative for lowering the 10% rule for UT was from Plano

but that works AGAINST Plano not for Plano

Plano has very large very high quality schools and thus they have students in the 11% to 25% (and lower) range of their HS class that are still very desirable students for a university Vs students from a terrible school district that are in the top 10% of their HS class with a 2.85 GPA and a 910 on the SAT

so Plano has a lot of kids that get locked out of UT because UT is letting in a large % of students based solely on being in the top 10% of their HS class with a 2,85 GPA and a 910 SAT and not based on a student having a 3.85 GPA in all advanced classes and a 1,200 on the SAT

and when you lower the HS class metric from 10% to 8% or 7% that simply locks more Plano kids out of UT so it is NOT A BENEFIT for Plano in particular it is a detriment

and the top 10% rule backfired (as all stupid government ideas do) because instead of more minorities getting in under the 10% rule it was more rural students from smaller districts that were often not minorities now getting in based on the 10% rule

and the A&M decision to not go for lowering the 10% rule was based on wanting to be a larger university and growing enrollment for the sake of warm bodies with an Aggie shirt on

and it was McKinney that made the decision to not try and lower the % (probably his biggest mistake in an otherwise great career)

http://www.texastribune.org/tribpedia/top-ten-percent-rule/about/

and for A&M if A&M is dumb enough to want to continue to increase enrollment it can be dome simply by figuring out why 11,500 students that applied and were admitted decided to go elsewhere....and I am pretty sure the answer will probably start with "got a better offer", "got into a better university" or "A&M is too big" or some combination of the three and I can guarantee the answer will NOT be "A&M was too small" or "A&M just does not admit enough ordinary students to appeal to me"
biobioprof
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I think you missed the point of that law for Plano. The goal was to increase the slots for those below the top 10% by capping the fraction of automatic admissions in the freshman class. When you do that while holding enrollment constant, the top X% has to use a smaller value for X. I think the Plano rep wanted to cap automatic admits at something like 50%.

Shifting top 10% to a smaller fraction also helps kids from areas like Plano because a) the absolute numbers are smaller, leaving more room for other admits that use the criteria favored by the suburban parents, and b) the very top kids from other districts are more likely to have offers from other schools, which makes them less likely to take a slot.
FishPondFisherman
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I think you missed the point of that law for Plano. The goal was to increase the slots for those below the top 10% by capping the fraction of automatic admissions in the freshman class. When you do that while holding enrollment constant, the top X% has to use a smaller value for X. I think the Plano rep wanted to cap automatic admits at something like 50%.

Shifting top 10% to a smaller fraction also helps kids from areas like Plano because a) the absolute numbers are smaller, leaving more room for other admits that use the criteria favored by the suburban parents, and b) the very top kids from other districts are more likely to have offers from other schools, which makes them less likely to take a slot.
I think it would really only work out that way for a Plano student that was also "diversity" (and specifically not Asian)

when it comes down to it even very good students from Plano are probably not all on a large scale going to be scoring a high enough SAT to be able to squeak into the limited slots available from the movement of 10% to 8% or 7%

there will be a great deal more Plano students overall that would have been in that 7% to 10% that would have gone to UT Vs students that are now outside the 8% or 7% and yet have all the metrics to qualify for those limited number of slots freed up

UT is looking for "diversity" in some of those slots and they are looking for top out of state students like students in the top 5% of their HS class with a 1350 SAT that will pay a full ride because they want to come to UT or Austin for some reason or a student they can give a partial scholarship to and still have pay slightly over in state tuition

it is not going to result in a net gain for Plano students because after the 7% or 8% are met they are not simply looking for "next up" with "next up" being 8% to 10% with a pretty good SAT or 11% to 25% with a really good SAT

lets look at it a different way

for A&M if you are outside the top 10% you need a 1,300 SAT to get in automatically

the average SAT for UCLA in 2011 (last data available from the CMUP) was a 1,300 and UCLA is highly competitive to get in to as much or more because of the desired location than academics (though academics of course is a MAJOR factor)

Illinois was a 1,280

BU private AAU member 1,275

UC San Diego again academics AND location make it very desirable 1,270

UMN 1,240

UNC was a 1,305

UC Davis 1,210 (Same as A&M that year)

so the point being a 1,300 is pretty darn high and a good score that gets students in line with a lot of top public and even some top private schools

UT was a 1,250

so the point being a politician was taking quite a risk to do a supposed "favor" (or looking out for her voters and their kids) by cutting back on 2% to 3% of high school classes that number in the 1,200 range at several Plano high schools getting into UT automatically and believing that more students would actually be admitted based on a holistic review and being able to crank out an SAT somewhere in the 1,280 to 1,310 range which is in line with the average at top public universities

if the HS class is 1,200 at 3 Plano schools and 2% fewer are auto admits that is 72 students losing that auto admit now you need at least 72 of them to pull probably a 1,300+ because now they are outside the top 8% and they are being judged on a "holistic" process that looks at a lot more than just class rank or even SATs

even if there are a lot of them cranking out that 1,300+ I am not sure UT is looking to get 72 more students strictly from the Plano area in particular with those open slots or even the DFW area

UC schools admit the 9% (well that is a starter) and then they do it by campus now to spread the load equally (something A&M and UT need to move towards and they improve OTHER system schools) and UCLA is probably the most popular and UCLA has program specific admissions

so in California a state larger than Texas by a fair amount of people with some pretty damn good high schools at one of the most selective and popular schools in the state and country a 9% HS class rank and 1,300 SAT would get you right at average for UCLA so it is quite a gamble that there will be a ton of Plano students outside of the top 8% of their HS class cranking that kind of score out AND having things like GPA, AP classes, extracurricular activities, (race wrongly in my opinion) (and race NOT being Asian) and getting into UT when the goal of UT having those extra slots is getting students with extremely high GPAs, out of state students, race based "diversity" (right or wrong) and pretty much anything other than "more common Plano Students with good or even great metrics"

because really with a super high GPA and not that high of a class rank (UC students being 9% or higher and 1,300 SAT average) I think UT would have to ask "were they ****ing off in class and pulled a great SAT and is that for us" and I think the answer would be "no" especially coming out of Plano

so I understand your concept, but I feel it is not a great risk on the part of that politician if that was her purpose and I feel it will not work out as intended if it was her purpose

and really I feel her purpose was more to allow UT to simply admit better students overall, get GPAs up and not be hamstrung by the 10% rule that has never worked as intended

the only possible way I could see it working for Plano is if they have a lot of black or Mexican students that are outside the top 10% by a 1% or 2% and that can crank out a 1,250 or better SAT with some AP classes and a lot of extracurricular activities as well and a lot of letters of recommendation and I am not sure they have that enough to offset the 72+ students that now are not getting in because they were in the 8% to 10% of HS class
AGSPORTSFAN07
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AG
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UT is capping at 50K and trying to reduce back to 45K. They'll get the best and brightest. The rest will go to A&M if they can't afford a private college. .

SMU has passed A&M in the rankings. Baylor will too in the next two years.


What else can you do when you don't have any sports programs?
Fitch
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AG
Well that's got to be the longest post without a lick of punctuation I've ever seen.

Bioprof is correct that lowering the 10% law would benefit the larger schools like those in Plano as a disproportionate number of slots at the universities go to rural kids. They might be smaller schools but there's many more of them in the state than 6A schools. Honestly I'm probably fine with that being the case as there are alternative auto admissions that are available (top 25% and high SAT score) which swing the pendulum back to the schools that prep for the national entrance exams better.

I'm a Plano ISD product and the 10% rule has little bearing for most of the kids the high schools produce. The competition for that echelon begins before junior high and basically demands a kid has no extra curriculars.

Also correct on the statement regarding Gates. He did away with both affirmative action and legacy points in admissions, and in turn relied on the 10% rule.

As to the point of "figuring out why 11,500 students decided to go elsewhere," that was covered previously in this thread. A&M has one of the best enrollment yields in the country. Therefore the fact that half of all applicants go elsewhere is not concerning...it far in away beats the national trend.

The consideration to continue enrollment growth is in part due to turning away qualified applicants. What I haven't heard sufficiently argued is why that would be a poor course of action if faculty and facilities grow in tandem.
FishPondFisherman
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Well that's got to be the longest post without a lick of punctuation I've ever seen.

Bioprof is correct that lowering the 10% law would benefit the larger schools like those in Plano as a disproportionate number of slots at the universities go to rural kids. They might be smaller schools but there's many more of them in the state than 6A schools. Honestly I'm probably fine with that being the case as there are alternative auto admissions that are available (top 25% and high SAT score) which swing the pendulum back to the schools that prep for the national entrance exams better.

I'm a Plano ISD product and the 10% rule has little bearing for most of the kids the high schools produce. The competition for that echelon begins before junior high and basically demands a kid has no extra curriculars.

Also correct on the statement regarding Gates. He did away with both affirmative action and legacy points in admissions, and in turn relied on the 10% rule.

As to the point of "figuring out why 11,500 students decided to go elsewhere," that was covered previously in this thread. A&M has one of the best enrollment yields in the country. Therefore the fact that half of all applicants go elsewhere is not concerning...it far in away beats the national trend.

The consideration to continue enrollment growth is in part due to turning away qualified applicants. What I haven't heard sufficiently argued is why that would be a poor course of action if faculty and facilities grow in tandem.
A&M is not "turning away qualified applicants"

A&M is watching 11,500 qualified applicants go elsewhere BY CHOICE

pretending that "yield" has meaning when A&M is watching about 7,000 more applicants that WERE ADMITTED AND ELIGIBLE TO ENROLL go elsewhere BY CHOICE compared to most other schools on that list just shows that meaningless statistics can be used for anything if you ignore the reality of them

what kind of idiotic administration worries about "turning away qualified applicants" when they are watching 11,500 ADMITTED students go elsewhere

again where in the hell does A&M think there are more qualified applicants waiting to apply that have not already and what makes anyone think if they existed that they would actually enroll if admitted

the idea that A&M needs to grow larger because they are turning away "qualified applicants" is a lie and it is pretty simple to prove when A&M has about 7,000+ more ADMITTED applicants choosing to go elsewhere besides UT, LSU and Florida and even then A&M has 4,500 more ADMITTED applicants CHOOSING to go elsewhere Vs any other school out there

no one with an ounce of common sense would look at those numbers and think "we need more applicants" or "we are turning away qualified students"

anyone with a functioning brain would think "what is making that massive number of actual warm bodies go elsewhere" and they would not look at some silly '% yield to try and pretend that was not a giant WTF as to why A&M has that many actual warm bodies choosing to go elsewhere especially when A&M actually wants MORE WARM BODIES
TXAggie2011
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AG

quote:
As to the point of "figuring out why 11,500 students decided to go elsewhere," that was covered previously in this thread. A&M has one of the best enrollment yields in the country. Therefore the fact that half of all applicants go elsewhere is not concerning...it far in away beats the national trend. .

I apologize if I missed this earlier in the thread, but I assume the "national trend" includes nearly all universities including a great many that we all agree Texas A&M should be, as a university (not yield), better than.

I'm not shocked that our yield is above average nationally considering we're a very large public flagship university, with a high admissions rate (~70%), and in a region that's not particularly overflowing with high quality universities.

I think the more interesting statistic would be our yield for higher quality applicants. (And within that group I'd also be interested to see our yield for out-of-state students.)


UT-Austin's desire to minimize automatic admissions is certainly a control measure. The fewer students automatically admitted, the more control you have. I have mixed emotions about affirmative action, but, although I don't know much about what kind of weight it plays in UT-Austin's undergraduate admissions process, I'm sure they have much more control over which students they allow in to achieve "diversity" and I know they certainly have the more diverse campus.

Whether affirmative action should exist, the importance of diversity on campus, and even what "diversity" means...those are ideological discussions I personally don't want to have, but there is no doubt having liberal automatic admissions policies lower university control over the makeup of their student body.
Fitch
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AG
We are absolutely turning away academically qualified applicants. I have family members that lived that fact.

You can look at the headcount all you want but its a pointless exercise and exclaiming that we "lose" 7,000 more admitted applicants than peer institutions is a false narrative. As is the statement that enrollment growth is targeted at attracting students "that just don't think A&M is big enough" - total straw man.

The percentage is what matters and in that regard A&M and texas both stack up extremely well nationally.

There's very likely truth in the statement that enrollment growth is partially economically motivated, on that I don't disagree. But to say that it's the only motivating factor is incorrect. There's an underlying debate about what the nature of higher education should look like in the state of Texas and the practicality of how the institutions should serve the public that funds them.
Fitch
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AG
quote:

quote:
As to the point of "figuring out why 11,500 students decided to go elsewhere," that was covered previously in this thread. A&M has one of the best enrollment yields in the country. Therefore the fact that half of all applicants go elsewhere is not concerning...it far in away beats the national trend. .

I apologize if I missed this earlier in the thread, but I assume the "national trend" includes nearly all universities including a great many that we all agree Texas A&M should be, as a university (not yield), better than.

I'm not shocked that our yield is above average nationally considering we're a very large public flagship university, with a high admissions rate (~70%), and in a region that's not particularly overflowing with high quality universities.

I think the more interesting statistic would be our yield for higher quality applicants. (And within that group I'd also be interested to see our yield for out-of-state students.)


UT-Austin's desire to minimize automatic admissions is certainly a control measure. The fewer students automatically admitted, the more control you have. I have mixed emotions about affirmative action, but, although I don't know much about what kind of weight it plays in UT-Austin's undergraduate admissions process, I'm sure they have much more control over which students they allow in to achieve "diversity" and I know they certainly have the more diverse campus.

Whether affirmative action should exist, the importance of diversity on campus, and even what "diversity" means...those are ideological discussions I personally don't want to have, but there is no doubt having liberal automatic admissions policies lower university control over the makeup of their student body.
Link to the yield data from earlier

The factors leading to the yield itself are difficult to discern. Factors like affordability, distance from home, specialized programs or religious affiliation all have meaningful effects in a decision to attend a university, not just the academic ranking.

But the story that it tells is that A&M is not some back up school (as has been claimed on this thread by a few folks) and that the overall enrollment percentage is quite high when viewed against the full range of universities nationally and exceptionally strong among public universities. This would be affirmative support for your statement that A&M should be viewed as better (or at least preferable to) the majority of other universities out there.
Aggball2010
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Seeing 11,500 kids go elsewhere as a bad sign is simply idiotic. Are you telling me that because those 11,500 kids went elsewhere A&M had to lower their standards and admit kids that would not have qualified had there not been those empty spaces voided by the 11,500?

Aren't the kids being admitted still in the 10% & or SAT standards?

Forgive my ignorance, but and average of 20-30 points on the SAT doesn't make me feel that A&M is any less prestigious.

And fishponds continuance to spout a "rural student in the top 10% with a 2.85 GPA" crap is just as idiotic.

I was just outside the 10% rule in my class of 126 graduates. My GPA was 3.68. I played every sport I could all 4 years. I scored a 24 on my ACT and never even took the SAT. Thankfully, I was admitted into the Gateway program (2nd year it had been in existence was 2006).

So how was I scored? No SAT score, I think 24 is a good ACT score (yes,no?). Was I a "Ding" against A&M?

You're bs about kids have a 2.85 in rural schools coming to A&M needs to cease or you need to back it up with a link. Maybe there is an exception down in Mercedes, Tx that has a low 3.0 GPA but you spout this as if there are hundreds-thousands being admitted annually.

I'll eat my words if I'm wrong, but you're likely under some misguided, delusional mindset.

Let me guess, you went to some big-city school and had a hard time getting accepted?
biobioprof
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The consideration to continue enrollment growth is in part due to turning away qualified applicants. What I haven't heard sufficiently argued is why that would be a poor course of action if faculty and facilities grow in tandem.
A few points:

Faculty and facilities are unlikely to grow in tandem. Some consultants were brought in during Gates time, and IIRC, they did not have good things to say about the planning process at A&M. Over the years there have been too many facilities decisions that are made based on short-term considerations. This ranges from the decision to put West Campus on the other side of the tracks instead of moving the golf course way many years ago to the more recent decision to create the Highway 47 campus for the med school.

In any complex system there are issues that arise with scaling up. Not my area of expertise, but I get the sense that there are entire fields of experts who study the challenges of scale in businesses. A&M is already at a size where problems of scale occur, from the problems of scheduling classes for students to the issues that arise when faculty and administrators don't have enough working relationships to trust each other's good faith. We already have plenty of turf battles between colleges, and to some extent between departments within colleges. As the university gets bigger, I suspect these get worse. IMO, there are probably already too many departments, and to some extent creation of new administrative units is stimulated by the will to power on the part of senior faculty (some of whom see this as a path when their research funding is stalled).

As the student body grows, I suspect it is also harder for students to have more of the shared experiences that add value through networking with each other, much less via networking with faculty, grad students, etc. If you look at a school like Stanford, it's striking how many of the startups involve a faculty mentor or a faculty member on the board. Even without that, students get letters of recommendation from us; I always tell my students that a letter describing someone you really feel like you know is more valuable than "I don't remember what he or she looks like, but I looked up their grade and they got an A".

There are too many variables for a proper comparison, but I think that many people think that these scaling issues are part of why the UC System approach of multiple medium to large high quality campuses is easier to build than excellence at a single, centralized campus. But, of course, there are many reasons why California has multiple public universities that are all ranked above the really big schools like Ohio State, Texas, Texas A&M, and Arizona State.

Yes, the US News rankings are imperfect, but like recruiting stars they are somewhat correlated with quality.

20 UC Berkeley
23 UCLA
37 UC-Santa Barbara
39 UCSD
39 UC-Irvine
41 UC-Davis
52 tOSU
52 tu
70 TAMU
82 UC-Santa Cruz
121 UC-Riverside
129 Arizona State
140 UT-Dallas (this is the only non-flagship that is ranked in the UT system. None of our satellites are)
TXAggie2011
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quote:
Seeing 11,500 kids go elsewhere as a bad sign is simply idiotic. Are you telling me that because those 11,500 kids went elsewhere A&M had to lower their standards and admit kids that would not have qualified had there not been those empty spaces voided by the 11,500?

Aren't the kids being admitted still in the 10% & or SAT standards?
You cannot pin it as "simply idiotic" without knowing which kids are coming to A&M and which kids are not.

Lets put top 10% (and other) automatic admits aside for a second and talk about non-automatic admits, we have hundreds or thousands of them running around campus.

Pretend that we have 1000 spots for we want/need to fill with non-automatic admits. If the 1000 top applicants all accepted and attended A&M, we had a yield of 100%, we would accept the 1000 top admits and our student body would be composed of those 1000 best applicants. However, any time one of those top 1000 declines A&M, you start accepting applicant 10001, 1002, and so on...so yes, if your best applicants do not attend your school you either have to accept a smaller student class or accept applicants who have lesser qualifications.

So, yes, anytime admitted students go somewhere else, your standards have probably been forced to be lowered unless those students were on the lower end of your applicant pool.

And yes, this happens just about everywhere, and like I said before, the question for me is less what is your overall yield, but which particular students are enrolling and not enrolling. If the top 47% of our accepted students enrolled, it'd be great but I suspect that is far from the case.
TXAggie2011
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[url=http://texags.com/forums/5/topics/2624036/replies/45058782][/url]
quote:

Link to the yield data from earlier

The factors leading to the yield itself are difficult to discern. Factors like affordability, distance from home, specialized programs or religious affiliation all have meaningful effects in a decision to attend a university, not just the academic ranking.

But the story that it tells is that A&M is not some back up school (as has been claimed on this thread by a few folks) and that the overall enrollment percentage is quite high when viewed against the full range of universities nationally and exceptionally strong among public universities. This would be affirmative support for your statement that A&M should be viewed as better (or at least preferable to) the majority of other universities out there.
In the huge scheme of 4-year advanced education, yes, I agree and don't argue A&M is not a "back-up" school but I for me that has ever really been the argument in the thread. Its about where A&M's place among public system flagships and reputable private schools is, will, and should be.

I think as another poster, Cecil, stated on your link, overall yield by itself offers limited insight into a university's true standing and that's what I was getting at.

I'm not disagreeing with you on the point you were making to particular posters, just commenting I'd be more interesting in a breakdown of yields according to quality of applicant, where non-enrollees are going, and what schools kids are turning down to come here. I think that would give a better picture of where A&M stands as far as reputation.

Also, again, I'm not surprised A&M has a good yield for a number a reasons, but most or all of them have nothing to do with academics
TaxAg16
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Just another way TAMU is beating everyone else's ass.

To those that say tu is surpassing A&M--I'm not sure what you're smoking.
TXAggie2011
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We are absolutely turning away academically qualified applicants. I have family members that lived that fact.
Have y'all defined what "qualified applicant" even means?
TXAggie2011
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Just another way TAMU is beating everyone else's ass.

To those that say tu is surpassing A&M--I'm not sure what you're smoking.
Who would you rank as the top 10 universities in the United States?

I'll go ahead and play spoiler and tell you that the 10 largest university campuses in the United States are Arizona State, Central Florida, Ohio State, Florida International, Texas A&M, Minnesota, UT-Austin, Michigan State, Florida, and Indiana.

How many of those 10 schools made your list of top 10?
Fitch
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I agree that would be interesting and telling to see what schools applicants turn down or accept in lieu of A&M, but so far as I'm aware that data doesn't exist. I could well be wrong, but I believe it would have to be mined from the individual applicants.
Aggball2010
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quote:
quote:
Seeing 11,500 kids go elsewhere as a bad sign is simply idiotic. Are you telling me that because those 11,500 kids went elsewhere A&M had to lower their standards and admit kids that would not have qualified had there not been those empty spaces voided by the 11,500?

Aren't the kids being admitted still in the 10% & or SAT standards?
You cannot pin it as "simply idiotic" without knowing which kids are coming to A&M and which kids are not.

Lets put top 10% (and other) automatic admits aside for a second and talk about non-automatic admits, we have hundreds or thousands of them running around campus.

Pretend that we have 1000 spots for we want/need to fill with non-automatic admits. If the 1000 top applicants all accepted and attended A&M, we had a yield of 100%, we would accept the 1000 top admits and our student body would be composed of those 1000 best applicants. However, any time one of those top 1000 declines A&M, you start accepting applicant 10001, 1002, and so on...so yes, if your best applicants do not attend your school you either have to accept a smaller student class or accept applicants who have lesser qualifications.

So, yes, anytime admitted students go somewhere else, your standards have probably been forced to be lowered unless those students were on the lower end of your applicant pool.

And yes, this happens just about everywhere, and like I said before, the question for me is less what is your overall yield, but which particular students are enrolling and not enrolling. If the top 47% of our accepted students enrolled, it'd be great but I suspect that is far from the case.


So my question for you is, do you REALLY think there is a difference in applicant 1000 & applicant 1001?

I still don't see where you know which of the 11,500 that went elsewhere were not replaced by someone just as good or maybe even better.

You realize there are a lot of applicants these days and 11,500 is a very small number.

Surely you don't think a large portion of those 11,500 all just decided to go to sip, do you? A few hundred, sure, but a few hundred sip applicants also came to A&M.
Aggball2010
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quote:
I agree that would be interesting and telling to see what schools applicants turn down or accept in lieu of A&M, but so far as I'm aware that data doesn't exist. I could well be wrong, but I believe it would have to be mined from the individual applicants.


So a lot of this uproar could very well be baseless? Go figure.
Aggball2010
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quote:
quote:
Just another way TAMU is beating everyone else's ass.

To those that say tu is surpassing A&M--I'm not sure what you're smoking.
Who would you rank as the top 10 universities in the United States?

I'll go ahead and play spoiler and tell you that the 10 largest university campuses in the United States are Arizona State, Central Florida, Ohio State, Florida International, Texas A&M, Minnesota, UT-Austin, Michigan State, Florida, and Indiana.

How many of those 10 schools made your list of top 10?



Here's another though, by A&M going to 80,000 students in a hurry, it will created even more Aggies today. It will make those Aggies kids grow up in all likelihood wanting to go to A&M.

Simple demographics show the population will continue to grow exponentially for the rest of time.

So when A&M bottlenecks after getting the 80,000 figure, demand will be high due to having had so many previous graduates. Then we will have to turn away twice the applicant tu ever does, and there will be nothing left for you to b*** about.
TXAggie2011
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quote:

So my question for you is, do you REALLY think there is a difference in applicant 1000 & applicant 1001?


I still don't see where you know which of the 11,500 that went elsewhere were not replaced by someone just as good or maybe even better.

You realize there are a lot of applicants these days and 11,500 is a very small number.

Surely you don't think a large portion of those 11,500 all just decided to go to sip, do you? A few hundred, sure, but a few hundred sip applicants also came to A&M.

Between 1000 and 1001, no, I do not. But between 1000 and 2000? Maybe, yeah. Between 1000 and 3000? Even more so. And continue on down and yes, I think there are some significant differences between our best applicants and our worst.

(And the above post was made without even considering yet how many would-be top applicants pass up and did not apply to A&M. I personally don't want students leaving Texas for MIT, Berkeley, Stanford, and you name it school...but I know they do. And while I know some students will leave Texas for non-academic reasons, I fear, I know, many kids go to those schools for academic reasons and I hate it when great talent leaves this great state.)

There are lots of applicants these days. 11,500 is a small number of all college applicants in a given year. It is still over half of those who apply to A&M and, say, for example, could go along way to filling up the entering class of the entire Ivy League.

I don't think all 11,500 went to "sip" and I yes, I know kids go to A&M over "sip", although I worry, its my feeling, based on anecdotal evidence and admissions statistics, that more good students pass-up A&M for "sip" then pass-up "sip" for A&M. I'm worried about so much more then "sip", anyways.

And sure, its possible that by and large our better applicants are attending A&M and our lesser applicants are attending other schools, and that'd be fine (although go back to my second paragraph about ensuring our better applicants are truly elite applicants), but logic tells me that's almost surely not what is happening. It seems to me flagship public schools are much more likely to lose their better admitted students to other schools than lose their lesser admitted students to other schools.

Yes, this could, I suppose, be baseless, but I've never said I'm speaking the gospel, I'm just discussing the possibility of what may be happening. No need to be hostile to me or others about this.

I would rather admit a possible issue and ensure its no longer an issue than watch this university in 10, 15, 20 years realize they have had the above issue for years but didn't do anything about it.
cecil77
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My youngest is a sr in college. Lots of her friends came to A&M. However, I can tell you that the top HS students (the ones that want Ivys or Rice or Vanderbilt, etc) look at A&M as a safety school. And that includes those with Aggie parents.
 
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