In a recent study published by the American Educational Research Association, researchers evaluated whether admissions certainty for Texas high school graduates has different effects on high- and low-income students.
The report titled “Match or Mismatch? Automatic Admissions and College Preferences of Low- and High-Income Students” studied Texas’ college admissions policy, the Top Ten Percent (TTP) Plan, to determine whether guaranteed admissions in Texas can help reduce college undermatching (failing to enroll at highly selective colleges) and overmatching (the practice of low-achieving students enrolling at selective colleges) of incoming freshmen and transfer students from different income levels in the college applications process.
Lead authors of the report, Dr. Jane Arnold Lincove, professor of public policy at University of Maryland, Baltimore County and Dr. Kalena E. Cortes, associate professor of public policy at Texas A&M University, studied the paths of 146,000 Texas public high schoolers who graduated in springs of 2008 and 2009 and applied to at least one four-year university. About 34 percent were from low socioeconomic backgrounds.
The TTP was signed into law by then Governor George W. Bush in 1997 and was designed to replace affirmative action. It provides guaranteed admissions to a four-year university in the state of Texas for all high school students who rank in the top 10 percentile of their class, regardless of their exposure to college coursework or high school quality. During the spring of their junior year, eligible students receive a letter notifying them of the institutions they’re automatically admitted into.
The report also stated non-eligible students are required to compete in holistic processes, even if their SAT or ACT scores and other college readiness measures are above those within the top 10 percent of their class.
While “There’s something kind of simple and elegant about just getting a letter in the mail that lists all the schools you’ve been admitted to,” the “Top Ten Percent Plan is only successful at creating more diverse student bodies at Texas public institutions because the state has really segregated high schools,” Lincove said.
As a result, Lincove said that the downside to the state admissions policy because is that it has to rely on continued segregation in high schools in order for it to be successful in creating diverse college student bodies.
