4 ms·

I've been getting the same feeling at UT Austin for a long time. At UT Austin, there is a 10% rule that has crippled the standard to which students are held.

by abossy 19y ago

I've been getting the same feeling at UT Austin for a long time. At UT Austin, there is a 10% rule that has crippled the standard to which students are held. The 10% rule states that any student in the top 10% of their graduating high school class is automatically admitted to the university; no questions asked. When you consider the range of quality among high schools in a state as large as Texas, you can imagine the disparity between the valedictorian of the best public school vs. the 9.99%-ranked student of the worst one. As a result, the intro classes are populated with the type of students mentioned in the article -- those that are there for the wrong reasons, and don't really have any direction. The later classes suffer from this to a lesser extent, but the university's leniency when it comes to failing classes and the length it takes to receive a diploma is still problematic (some students take up to 6, 7 years to graduate). Thus, the solution is to isolate oneself among the outstanding students, i.e., in honors and graduate classes, in computer science in my case (or any other difficult field that acts as a natural filter), where the top students reside, who are truly excellent and stand among those from any top school. Case in point: I am often surprised to meet students that were accepted to top-notch schools - -- but couldn't enroll for one reason or another, such as money, that I wouldn't consider outstanding students. I wonder if a more competitive school would be "easier" because I would be pushed to excellence instead of striving for excellence in spite of a standard of mediocrity. That said, Computer Science at UT is an excellent and competitive program. This is true of most of the hard sciences, math, physics, and a few others, but I truly question the validity of certain degrees...

utnick 19y ago
Some of the most successful people people I know graduated in so called 'less valid majors'. The real world requires a different skillset than just memorizing what a euler path is for the exam next week.
- abossy 19y ago
  Please don't misinterpret my post -- it wasn't intended to bash certain majors. I should have pointed out that many fields are a "catch-all," i.e., those which students default to that either lack direction or greater ambition in their studies. Take psychology, for example; while psychology is a VERY difficult science of which little is understood, and much has to be discovered, it does not have a rigorous workload, and doesn't provide the curricular challenges that the majors I mentioned do. I use this as an example because my sister plans to study in psychology, and I have preached this lesson to her repeatedly; that it is most commonly the largest major at universities, and thus the "catch-all"; therefore, the lowest common denominator is reduced to a minimum for the standards of that school. At UT, that is quite low. That is not to say that all psychology majors will be unsuccessful -- of the top of my head, I can think of two brilliant contributors to my field of study, computer science, that were psychologists (Minsky and Licklider) -- but rather, that their journey toward success will be hampered by an expectation of mediocrity.
bilbo0s 19y ago
Though I disagree with the practice, there is a reason behind the 10% rule at UT. I think many people in this nation would be surprised to find out what would happen without rules like this at our better state schools. I'll save you the details, suffice it to say that whites would disappear from Georgia Tech, UTexas, UWisconsin and the like almost overnight. Again, as a conservative, it is abhorrent to me, it's essentially affirmative action for white kids. That said, I do understand what the people who run these schools are attempting to do with rules like this.
- abossy 19y ago
  I am missing your point; the people running UT have the 10% rule in place to achieve the exact opposite effect: to increase diversity within the student body. Therefore, I believe you mean to say that anybody BUT whites would disappear, i.e. black/hispanic/<underrepresented minority>. Unless, of course, you are implying that the 10% rule attracts whites, somehow. While I have witnessed the 10% rule opening doors for many students -- as a hispanic student, many of my hispanic peers would simply not have had the opportunity of a first-class eduction -- I don't believe a general universal rule is the answer, but, rather, admissions should be examined case-by-case.
  - Xichekolas 19y ago
    I think the real point of the 10% rule and rules like it (here at KU it's a 20% rule), is to make the college decision really easy for those desirable top-of-the-class students. Hell, it worked on me. I was #2 in my HS class, and the fact that I was automatically accepted (and offered scholarships to boot) really made me not want to bother with a real college search. I had better things to do (or so I thought at the time) my senior year than tour colleges and figure out financing. Think about it. The average state school is not going to be attracting a large population of out-of-state students. Here at KU we attract many for our Journalism/Social Welfare schools and our Med School Campus, but the vast majority are from Kansas or Missouri. It is in the University's interest to try and lock in the local HS talent as soon as possible, before that talent has the chance to look at a brilliant school in California or Boston. Without such rules, said local talent would be less likely to stay local, and state schools would have an even higher ratio of drink-yourself-retarded students to academic all-stars than they already do.

by abossy 19y ago

utnick 19y ago

Some of the most successful people people I know graduated in so called 'less valid majors'. The real world requires a different skillset than just memorizing what a euler path is for the exam next week.

abossy 19y ago
Please don't misinterpret my post -- it wasn't intended to bash certain majors. I should have pointed out that many fields are a "catch-all," i.e., those which students default to that either lack direction or greater ambition in their studies. Take psychology, for example; while psychology is a VERY difficult science of which little is understood, and much has to be discovered, it does not have a rigorous workload, and doesn't provide the curricular challenges that the majors I mentioned do. I use this as an example because my sister plans to study in psychology, and I have preached this lesson to her repeatedly; that it is most commonly the largest major at universities, and thus the "catch-all"; therefore, the lowest common denominator is reduced to a minimum for the standards of that school. At UT, that is quite low. That is not to say that all psychology majors will be unsuccessful -- of the top of my head, I can think of two brilliant contributors to my field of study, computer science, that were psychologists (Minsky and Licklider) -- but rather, that their journey toward success will be hampered by an expectation of mediocrity.

bilbo0s 19y ago

Though I disagree with the practice, there is a reason behind the 10% rule at UT. I think many people in this nation would be surprised to find out what would happen without rules like this at our better state schools. I'll save you the details, suffice it to say that whites would disappear from Georgia Tech, UTexas, UWisconsin and the like almost overnight. Again, as a conservative, it is abhorrent to me, it's essentially affirmative action for white kids. That said, I do understand what the people who run these schools are attempting to do with rules like this.

abossy 19y ago
I am missing your point; the people running UT have the 10% rule in place to achieve the exact opposite effect: to increase diversity within the student body. Therefore, I believe you mean to say that anybody BUT whites would disappear, i.e. black/hispanic/<underrepresented minority>. Unless, of course, you are implying that the 10% rule attracts whites, somehow. While I have witnessed the 10% rule opening doors for many students -- as a hispanic student, many of my hispanic peers would simply not have had the opportunity of a first-class eduction -- I don't believe a general universal rule is the answer, but, rather, admissions should be examined case-by-case.
- Xichekolas 19y ago
  I think the real point of the 10% rule and rules like it (here at KU it's a 20% rule), is to make the college decision really easy for those desirable top-of-the-class students. Hell, it worked on me. I was #2 in my HS class, and the fact that I was automatically accepted (and offered scholarships to boot) really made me not want to bother with a real college search. I had better things to do (or so I thought at the time) my senior year than tour colleges and figure out financing. Think about it. The average state school is not going to be attracting a large population of out-of-state students. Here at KU we attract many for our Journalism/Social Welfare schools and our Med School Campus, but the vast majority are from Kansas or Missouri. It is in the University's interest to try and lock in the local HS talent as soon as possible, before that talent has the chance to look at a brilliant school in California or Boston. Without such rules, said local talent would be less likely to stay local, and state schools would have an even higher ratio of drink-yourself-retarded students to academic all-stars than they already do.