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With the ivy league and many prestigious private universities, it is not so much your grades and resume that matter getting in, but who you are, and who you know.

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This is a common misconception and just is not true.

Some thoughts:

Why do rankings not matter when we're low, but matter when we're high? Or vice versa.


"Education" is not only a dollar based ROI calculation.

The fundamental flaw in the 25x25 initiative is that it puts enrollment numbers as a measure of success. Enrollment increases, if they occur, should be a consequence of providing an excellent education, not a goal in and of itself.

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Money magazine labels A&M a "safety school" for accepting more than 66% of applicants.

http://www.businessinsider.com/most-underrated-colleges-2015-7

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Apparently this stat is legit and is getting a lot of play on social media.

2/3rds of the applicants are getting in to our school. That is really awful and daunting news. Aggie rings/ loyalty notwithstanding, not sure how amped I will be to hire an A&M grad in 18 years. It reminds me of what an Ole Miss recruiter once told me when she visited my high school to talk about their admissions process: "If you can walk and chew gum, you're in."

U.S. News and World Report says A&M's acceptance rate is 69%

College Express says A&M's acceptance rate is 71%

College Apps says A&M's acceptance rate is 69%

Accptancerate.com says A&M's acceptance rate is 69.5%

The Princeton Review says A&M's acceptance rate is 71%


It seems like A&M would want these figures corrected if they're inaccurate since A&M obviously doesn't look like a competitive/quality university to prospective students who are researching universities.

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It seems like A&M would want these figures corrected if they're inaccurate since A&M obviously doesn't look like a competitive/quality university to prospective students who are researching universities.

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They're not inaccurate.

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It seems like A&M would want these figures corrected if they're inaccurate since A&M obviously doesn't look like a competitive/quality university to prospective students who are researching universities.

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They're not inaccurate.

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You can find the A&M official numbers at DARS. Here's what we're saying about Fall 2014, Main campus undergrad only:

First time in college overall: 70.89% based on 21,888 admits from 30,874 applications. Of these about half end up enrolled. Top 10%ers are 11,657 of the applicants, 11,628 of the admits, and 5,797 of the enrolled.

They also have data broken out by college.

70.89% accepted and only half in the top 10% and John Sharp wants to make it easier to get in??

Those numbers are both surprising and disappointing. Really pretty pitiful for a school that wants to be thought of highly.

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Those numbers are both surprising and disappointing. Really pretty pitiful for a school that wants to be thought of highly.

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Disappointing, yes. Surprising? Shouldn't be.

Median acceptance rate at A&M since 1996 is 69.96%. Average is 71.27%,


Don't mistake me: I'm not saying that is good. But it is the way A&M has been doing things for a while now.

Cannot wait until the current generation in charge is phased out. Hopefully the damage wont be irreversible.

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With the ivy league and many prestigious private universities, it is not so much your grades and resume that matter getting in, but who you are, and who you know.

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This has been proven inaccurate since the advent of first the post-WW2 GI Bill and then later the subsidized student loans. Many of the Ivy-level schools actually increased education quality after these two changes. Before only wealthy students could attend. After, any qualified student could attend and pay, so the talent level rose substantially in the applicant pool.

If I read the data correctly in those links... when I was a freshman (fall 2006), only 40% of my undergrad class was in the Top 10%.

Tried to view all the way back to 1999, but nothing substantial could be calculated. I think the gist of when I read that 1997 Texas Monthly article, the admitted 50% of our class was top 10%, or at least that is what was written.

Just looks like to be decreasing each year.

Or the class just keeps getting bigger, but our Top 10% admit count has been roughly the same. We're just admitting more people and the % just gets smaller and smaller.

Bob, if you are referring to the percentage of the enrolled class that was in the top 10% of their Texas HS class then that number has been generally higher in recent years.

56% of the class was Top 10% rule in 2014. Average since 1998 is 49%, median is 48%, and 2011-2014 are the four highest percentages in that time frame.

If anyone is really concerned about enrollment growth and selectiveness, I recommend you email Chancellor Sharp or Mike Young. I've gotten a response from Sharp every time I've emailed him, including on this topic.

Chancellor@tamus.edu
mkyoung@tamu.edu

What kind of questions have you asked and what kind of answers have you gotten? Obviously private communication should remain private, but is there anything that would be appropriate to share?

Where was this outrage back in 2006 and 2007 when we admitted 77% of all applicants?

For obvious legal reasons we have to set aside the stats for the top 10%. Looking at the rest, we had 19,217 applicants and 4,563 of them came to school. 23% hardly seems like we are letting everyone in, but carry on with your uninformed mob. But before you carry on, please answer my bolded question above because that puts everything into perspective. Thanks!

PS - Reminder, we all want A&M to be good. But you guys sound like climate change lemons, not people who study in depth.

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Where was this outrage back in 2006 and 2007 when we admitted 77% of all applicants?

For obvious legal reasons we have to set aside the stats for the top 10%. Looking at the rest, we had 19,217 applicants and 4,563 of them came to school. 23% hardly seems like we are letting everyone in, but carry on with your uninformed mob. But before you carry on, please answer my bolded question above because that puts everything into perspective. Thanks!

PS - Reminder, we all want A&M to be good. But you guys sound like climate change lemons, not people who study in depth.

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Actually, I would submit that those of us with concerns are the ones paying attention to the actual numbers. And no, we do not "obviously" have to set aside stats for the top 10%. The numbers are what they are. The to 10% is what it is. Your 23% number, is meaningless. The number you're looking for is 53%:

Non top 10% applicants: 30,874 total applicants - 11657 top10 applicants = 19,217
Non top 10% admits: 21,888 total admits - 11628 top10 admits = 10260

10,260 not top10 admits / 19,217 not top10 applicants = 53.3% acceptance of not top 10 applicants.

(You used the ENROLLED number divided by applicants. That number is meaningless, at least in the context of this discussion.)

As to your bolded question: Because I wasn't paying attention and didn't know about it.

I would also submit that comments like "your uniformed mob" add nothing to this discussion, and actually serve to diminish your points.

I'm on my phone so I don't have the numbers in front of me:

What is the 23% number supposed to be? The number enrolled divided by the number of applicants?

See above edit. Your question made me look further.

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What kind of questions have you asked and what kind of answers have you gotten? Obviously private communication should remain private, but is there anything that would be appropriate to share?

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I'll keep those conversations private, but he did mention that President Young will be calling the shots on enrollment at the CS campus in the future and if Mike wants to raise admission standards, he'll support it. So everyone who is taking the time to post on this thread should take the time to express your thoughts to him. It makes a difference. His email is below.

Mkyoung@tamu.edu

Dr. Young is going to listen to us? Really?

Emails to the administration is the reason Rick Perry's name isn't on the academic building. Start writing.

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Your 23% number, is meaningless. The number you're looking for is 53%:

Non top 10% applicants: 30,874 total applicants - 11657 top10 applicants = 19,217
Non top 10% admits: 21,888 total admits - 11628 top10 admits = 10260

10,260 not top10 admits / 19,217 not top10 applicants = 53.3% acceptance of not top 10 applicants.

(You used the ENROLLED number divided by applicants. That number is meaningless, at least in the context of this discussion.)

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What matters is who steps foot on campus, which would be enrolled. We enrolled 23% of all of the non top 10% students who applied.

So there are 2 potential fights here
1)fight the legislature to change the top 10% rule
or
2)contact the powers that be to lower the number of non top 10% students that we enroll.

For all of you wanting to reduce the size of the fish class which would eventually reduce the overall enrollment assuming we didn't increase undergrad transfers or grad students - you're right that we have increased the fish class by appx 2200 from 2012 to 2014. Now let's say you're right and we need to go back to the 2012 fish class size (appx 8,000). We are close to 6,000 of those spots taken up by the top 10%. So that leaves 2,000 spots for everyone else, including all foreign and out-of-state students and athletes. Which means, good luck becoming an Aggie if you're not in the top 10% of your class. Sucks if you went to a good HS, when instead you should have gone to a crappy HS where you could have finished in the top 10%. Don't care how could you did on your SAT because we don't have room for you. Top 10%ers only! And as Texas continues to grow in population pretty soon even all of the top 10%ers won't get in.

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Sucks if you went to a good HS, when instead you should have gone to a crappy HS where you could have finished in the top 10%.

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This. My oldest made it into the top 10% and A&M. My second kid isn't currently in the top 10%, but he's at a scholastically competitive school in a very competitive district.

I'm confident that he'll ace the SAT, but I'm also ready for our society cut through the bs and give social engineering a rest.

Jeff, you're cherry picking to make a preconceived point.

You have to compare enrollments to offers. Using enrollments per applications doesn't mean anything.
Using that logic fewer than half of top 10% admitted chose to enroll. A better question is why only 49.8% of top 10% admits chose to enroll (AND THEY CAN CHOOSE ANY STATE SCHOOL THEY WANT). When fewer than half of the top 10% students we offer choose to accept, blaming anything on the top 10% rule is not accurate. The top 10% rule didn't really alter anything.

I do wish that the top 10% rule meant that a top 10% student must be admitted to A state school rather than ANY state school.

What's the point of top 10% again?

To make college an extension of high school?

You have to keep in mind the overlap.

There are top 10% students who would have been accepted & enrolled without the benefit of top 10%.

There are also top 10% teens who have no business going to college.

The last numbers I can find show 289,153 high school graduates in Texas public schools in 2013.

That's 28,915 high seniors in the top 10% (undoubtedly higher now) but using that number:

How come only 40.3% of top 10% high school seniors even bother to apply to A&M where they are guaranteed acceptance? And then under half of those who choose to apply bother to enroll? Throw in only two Tier one institutions in Texas, and it doesn't look any better.

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For obvious legal reasons we have to set aside the stats for the top 10%. Looking at the rest, we had 19,217 applicants and 4,563 of them came to school. 23% hardly seems like we are letting everyone in, but carry on with your uninformed mob.

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Enrolling 23% of non top-10% applicants hardly indicates we are not "letting everyone in."

Let's do some "informing."

There are tens and tens of universities that don't admit 23% of applicants. Yet alone enroll 23% of applicants.

There are surely many more that don't admit 23% of their applicants that were not in the top 10% of their high school class.

For a quick comparison, one of the gold standards is Harvard. In the last cycle, they admitted 5.6% of applicants. 80% of applicants enrolled, meaning 4.5% of applicants were enrolled.

I don't know what the % are for non top-10% applicants to Harvard, but I imagine they are signicantly lower.

I know we will never be Harvard but that's the standard for tough admissions, and we're nowhere close.

(I'll look at some other, more "comparable" schools in a bit when I'm not on my phone.)

Michigan: 15% of ALL applicants enrolled.

Virginia: 12% of ALL applicants enrolled.

North Carolina: 13% of ALL applicants enrolled.

Cal-Berkely: 7% of ALL applicants enrolled.

Who cares what percentage of applicants enroll? I fail to see how that number has any significance at all.

A&M's acceptance rate means something.

The yield (enrolled/admitted) means something.

Enrolled/applied is meaningless.

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Who cares what percentage of applicants enroll? I fail to see how that number has any significance at all.

A&M's acceptance rate means something.

The yield (enrolled/admitted) means something.

Enrolled/applied is meaningless.

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Enrolled/applied is the product of your two meaningful numbers, so, to be fair, it probably means something.

But I imagine its only generally useful. I've only looked at a few numbers, but generally it appears to me the lower it is, the more prestigious the school.

The problem with trying to use it for anything more than a rather general guide is you "want" a low acceptance rate, and a high yield. I do think those two go together, so in that regard, enrolled/applied seems to remain significant.

The other problem with touting the 23% rate is that it isn't really that low. The elite schools are less than 10% if not less than 5%, the next group of those respected, but not really elite are less than 20%. And A&M isn't in that latter group for non-top 10% applicants, yet alone for all applicants.

That said, agreed, its just easier and clearer to use acceptance rate and yield.

For some strange reason I think that A&M will go up in the rankings this next cycle. Maybe it is just wishful thinking. However I agree with others who feel that the acceptance rate is too high. I guess there are those who think that just being real big is very desirable. Striving to be among the best doesn't matter. Leave that for others.

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What's the point of top 10% again?

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IIRC, it was promoted by Dr. Gates to avoid race-based affirmative action of the kind used at tu and most other schools at the time.

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There are top 10% students who would have been accepted & enrolled without the benefit of top 10%.

There are also top 10% teens who have no business going to college.

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this. But I'd add that there have been teens admitted who have no business going to college under all systems of admissions at every university.

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What's the point of top 10% again?

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IIRC, it was promoted by Dr. Gates to avoid race-based affirmative action of the kind used at tu and most other schools at the time.

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oh...

...but the flag at a memorial in South Carolina came down.

Racism is over!