Texas tonight--proof that the college system is broken

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I thought that universities in places like Texas were going to DIE?!!!!!! That no female EVER would apply to somewhere in that regressive hellhole?

Well my DD and all of her friends would never apply there. Same for my DS and his friends (male or female), because well, they don't want to live in a regressive state where it's challenging to get medical care you or your loved ones want.

Where the heck do you live? I live in DC and my teens and friends (a mix of private and public juniors and seniors) from upper NW would love to live in Austin. They're not making college decisions based on abortion care. I mean, really?

I think pp's attitude is a big part of the reason why schools like UT (and Florida, and South Carolina, and so on) are exploding in popularity. Normal people don't think like that. They want to stay away from that mindset.

YUP.
DC liberals: "Texas is bad. BAD i tell you!!!!!."
Their kids: "Mom, you're nuts"

If I had a dollar for every NW DC kid I PERSONALLY know who applied to Texas I could buy myself a Chipotle burrito for lunch today.

You are completely full of shit. This has nothing to do with politics, but almost nobody from my kid's upper NW DC school applied to Texas...nor did any of their friends at Walls, JR, Sidwell and GDS.

How do parents even know this personal business? Creepy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I wouldn't put this just on Texas - the common app has broken the system so that kids apply to routinely 15-20 schools. If they had a limit of 10 which is completely reasonable, then kids would only apply to the ones they wanted to. At my kids high school, the number of kids applying to Wisconsin, Boulder, Michigan, Washington is over 50 kids - sometimes as high as 80. Most of those numbers have doubled in the past few years.

It’s not just the common app. It’s also test optional.

It seems like before 2020, students were sorting themselves by the SAT/ACT scores given in school profiles. In other words maybe schools didn’t weigh the SAT very heavily, but students did, and they self-selected out of the applicant pool. When all the schools went test optional at once, admissions became less predictable, which caused students to apply to more schools as a kind of insurance, which caused admissions to become even less predictable, which caused students to apply to even more schools …

Students hate it and schools hate it but I’m not sure there’s any way to put the genie back in the bottle.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This doesn’t mean our system is broken.
Texas needs better enrollment management.
They do a lot of things that are difficult to coordinate- mandatory admission to top 6 percent, admissions by major (not even school, by major), cap of 10 percent on non residents and now huge spike.
They have to place the auto admits before they know if there’s enough room for non autos and that requires seeing the entire pool of applicants. If they get it wrong, they could have 12,000 people show up for 8500 spots pretty easily.
It’s not the system. It’s Texas. They have had a horrible admissions process for years. This was par for the course.

+1, the only commenter who can think beyond themselves. There’s a lot of things the admissions team at UT is factoring that most schools don’t even have to think about. Sadly these are state laws and can’t be changed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wouldn't put this just on Texas - the common app has broken the system so that kids apply to routinely 15-20 schools. If they had a limit of 10 which is completely reasonable, then kids would only apply to the ones they wanted to. At my kids high school, the number of kids applying to Wisconsin, Boulder, Michigan, Washington is over 50 kids - sometimes as high as 80. Most of those numbers have doubled in the past few years.

It’s not just the common app. It’s also test optional.

It seems like before 2020, students were sorting themselves by the SAT/ACT scores given in school profiles. In other words maybe schools didn’t weigh the SAT very heavily, but students did, and they self-selected out of the applicant pool. When all the schools went test optional at once, admissions became less predictable, which caused students to apply to more schools as a kind of insurance, which caused admissions to become even less predictable, which caused students to apply to even more schools …

Students hate it and schools hate it but I’m not sure there’s any way to put the genie back in the bottle.

UT is test required.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I thought that universities in places like Texas were going to DIE?!!!!!! That no female EVER would apply to somewhere in that regressive hellhole?

Well my DD and all of her friends would never apply there. Same for my DS and his friends (male or female), because well, they don't want to live in a regressive state where it's challenging to get medical care you or your loved ones want.

Where the heck do you live? I live in DC and my teens and friends (a mix of private and public juniors and seniors) from upper NW would love to live in Austin. They're not making college decisions based on abortion care. I mean, really?

I think pp's attitude is a big part of the reason why schools like UT (and Florida, and South Carolina, and so on) are exploding in popularity. Normal people don't think like that. They want to stay away from that mindset.

YUP.
DC liberals: "Texas is bad. BAD i tell you!!!!!."
Their kids: "Mom, you're nuts"

If I had a dollar for every NW DC kid I PERSONALLY know who applied to Texas I could buy myself a Chipotle burrito for lunch today.

You are completely full of shit. This has nothing to do with politics, but almost nobody from my kid's upper NW DC school applied to Texas...nor did any of their friends at Walls, JR, Sidwell and GDS.

M
How do parents even know this personal business? Creepy.

Not sure how PP knows nobody applied to Texas bc I know a couple from Sidwell and other schools who did.

[Anonymous]

This sounds like just insane mismanagement by UT's new hire -- particularly the fact that the Texas auto admits didn't get immediately acceptances.

My kid applied to Arizona, OOS but above their cut-offs for auto-admission, and within 24 hours she had her admission letter and a full tuition scholarship. It was so quick that she thought it was the "we've received your application" notification when she saw it pop in the portal.

Especially with test scores, they shold be able to run an auto sort and get their top 10% of applicants admitted immediately, reject their bottom 10% of admits, and then move on from there, but starting with the EA applicants before they do the RDs. It sounds like they just had no system.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wouldn't put this just on Texas - the common app has broken the system so that kids apply to routinely 15-20 schools. If they had a limit of 10 which is completely reasonable, then kids would only apply to the ones they wanted to. At my kids high school, the number of kids applying to Wisconsin, Boulder, Michigan, Washington is over 50 kids - sometimes as high as 80. Most of those numbers have doubled in the past few years.

It’s not just the common app. It’s also test optional.

It seems like before 2020, students were sorting themselves by the SAT/ACT scores given in school profiles. In other words maybe schools didn’t weigh the SAT very heavily, but students did, and they self-selected out of the applicant pool. When all the schools went test optional at once, admissions became less predictable, which caused students to apply to more schools as a kind of insurance, which caused admissions to become even less predictable, which caused students to apply to even more schools …

Students hate it and schools hate it but I’m not sure there’s any way to put the genie back in the bottle.

UT is test required.

NP. I think PP is saying that test optional pushed the uncertainty ball forward such that uncertainty remains even now that tests are required again.

I think that's possible, but remains to be seen, since it is early yet for schools going back to test required and many schools are still test optional.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This makes no sense. It ucks. UCLA gets 120k apps, NYU and Northeastern get 100k. Other colleges can manage, but not Texas?

?? If Harvard got a 40k increase to 100k apps, they’d also have admissions issues. UT had has a consistent steady rise from 40-70k apps over a long term period. They had 3x the increase in apps as years prior. I get your emotional you didn’t get your admission decision, but this is stupid.

+1

There's no way they were staffed for that increase. If they did, people would be screaming about administrative bloat.

[Anonymous]

they changed the letter in the kids' portals (since yesterday) to now call them all officially "deferred" and 30% of the class is filled. Reddit is saying that likely most OOS spots are gone because almost all auto-admits were deferred and have to still be admitted.

Quite likely that most OOS kids will just never be reviewed at all. they reviewed a small percentage of apps, filled the class and that's that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:they changed the letter in the kids' portals (since yesterday) to now call them all officially "deferred" and 30% of the class is filled. Reddit is saying that likely most OOS spots are gone because almost all auto-admits were deferred and have to still be admitted.

Quite likely that most OOS kids will just never be reviewed at all. they reviewed a small percentage of apps, filled the class and that's that.

Honestly, I don't think anyone can know for sure about the chances for yesterday's OOS deferrals since UT admissions is fit to major. I'm guessing that they might still have a pool of high-potential OOS applicants but have to sort the major choices for all the remaining auto-admits. Only then can they see what further spots are open for the remaining OOS pool.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As long as they are admitting the very top students from Texas, I think they can do whatever they like. If you live in another state, you should already know that it is very hard to get into Texas-Austin.

Aren't the admissions decisions for Texas kids delayed too though? Imagine being a Texas kid who applied mostly to Texas schools, now in limbo and wondering how many more schools to apply to.

Are you from Texas? It’s really easy to get into other Texas schools. Most UT students could count A&M as a safety, and if they like college towns but are more progressive Texas state is a really nice school too that you can practically walk into. Texan colleges are not hard to get into other than UT.

It's easy to get into UT for Texas kids at the top of their class. For those outside, it's nearly impossible

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This sounds like just insane mismanagement by UT's new hire -- particularly the fact that the Texas auto admits didn't get immediately acceptances.

My kid applied to Arizona, OOS but above their cut-offs for auto-admission, and within 24 hours she had her admission letter and a full tuition scholarship. It was so quick that she thought it was the "we've received your application" notification when she saw it pop in the portal.

Especially with test scores, they shold be able to run an auto sort and get their top 10% of applicants admitted immediately, reject their bottom 10% of admits, and then move on from there, but starting with the EA applicants before they do the RDs. It sounds like they just had no system.

Its never worked like that for Austin. They typically wait to see if you get accepted into your college.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This sounds like just insane mismanagement by UT's new hire -- particularly the fact that the Texas auto admits didn't get immediately acceptances.

My kid applied to Arizona, OOS but above their cut-offs for auto-admission, and within 24 hours she had her admission letter and a full tuition scholarship. It was so quick that she thought it was the "we've received your application" notification when she saw it pop in the portal.

Especially with test scores, they shold be able to run an auto sort and get their top 10% of applicants admitted immediately, reject their bottom 10% of admits, and then move on from there, but starting with the EA applicants before they do the RDs. It sounds like they just had no system.

Fantastic, congratulations! Is this ASU or Univ of AZ?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As long as they are admitting the very top students from Texas, I think they can do whatever they like. If you live in another state, you should already know that it is very hard to get into Texas-Austin.

Aren't the admissions decisions for Texas kids delayed too though? Imagine being a Texas kid who applied mostly to Texas schools, now in limbo and wondering how many more schools to apply to.

Are you from Texas? It’s really easy to get into other Texas schools. Most UT students could count A&M as a safety, and if they like college towns but are more progressive Texas state is a really nice school too that you can practically walk into. Texan colleges are not hard to get into other than UT.

It's easy to get into UT for Texas kids at the top of their class. For those outside, it's nearly impossible

It really isn’t for many of the best majors- nursing, architecture, CS, Engineering, Business, even geo are not easy acceptances

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As long as they are admitting the very top students from Texas, I think they can do whatever they like. If you live in another state, you should already know that it is very hard to get into Texas-Austin.

Aren't the admissions decisions for Texas kids delayed too though? Imagine being a Texas kid who applied mostly to Texas schools, now in limbo and wondering how many more schools to apply to.

Are you from Texas? It’s really easy to get into other Texas schools. Most UT students could count A&M as a safety, and if they like college towns but are more progressive Texas state is a really nice school too that you can practically walk into. Texan colleges are not hard to get into other than UT.

I'm not (or I wouldn't ask theoretically, I'd be pissed!). I am not sure you are right though, 60% acceptance is not that high. In-state in some state has become increasingly competitive. And kids usually want flagship or one other one level "below".