Relative ranking AMONG students should be fairly solid even if most teachers are passing out A’s and B’s like candy. Generally, at a particular school I would expect a kid in the 90th percentile to be more capable than a kid in the 80th percentile.

jim d rightly makes his point about desire. This is something that can not be measured by tests and it is a human characteristic that can kick in at any time. The reality is that desire to succeed is at the heart of achieving the American dream. This is part of the reason why we have our schools set up the way we do. When someone finally gets the DESIRE to succeed, it is possible for them to get back into school or college. They are able to earn a degree, learn a trade, start a business, and go for it.

the one variable not even mentioned on this blog is the students DESIRE to Succeed.

Seems to me that one would out weigh almost any previous HS GPA.

The desire to do well, coupled with the self discipline required to do so can make nearly any student a success. The problem being we have no accurate means of measuring in advance the desire and discipline that a student will demonstrate once they fly the security of home. (as evidenced by the number of students that lose HOPE in Georgia every year.)

The college PARTY scene is a tough one to ignore and I’ve witnessed many students with great HS. GPA’s fall into that trap. On the other hand I’ve witnessed young people with average GPA’s attending colleges that hold strict discipline standards (military school) that actually have set aside study periods every day and that teach students HOW to STUDY and succeed at the college level.

I realize that Military academies are not for every student but perhaps our state colleges could borrow a page from their play book.

The issue here is hypothesis testing. The task at hand is, or should be, to determine in advance who will succeed at our flagship universities and who will fail. IF we had some set of measurements we could take to predict this with 100% accuracy, then the whole discussion of HOW to figure out WHO to let in would be rendered moot – we’d use the 100% accurate test. To do otherwise would be wasting precious seats on kids who could never graduate – not “fair” to students who would succeed, or for that matter to the fore-ordained failures.

You want to confer advantage on your kids so that they can be successful – me too. So we make sure they go to good schools, work with them and their teachers when they have trouble, get any other outside help they may need – this is all good.

At the college level, this degree of parental involvement will end, or at least it should.
We both know that, when you’re comparing Bob and Fred’s 1250 and 1200 above, we’re not comparing apples to apples – the circumstances are very different.

At my kids’ elementary school, the “gifted” criteria indicate that gifted students should be at or above the 95th percentile intelligence – and yet approximately one third of the students are “gifted” (to parry any ad hominem attacks in advance, both of my kids are among the “gifted”). REALLY – 33% of the kids are in the top 5%? I find this to be statistically wildly unlikely.

Using existing admissions criteria, at some high schools 20% of the kids can succeed at UGA or GA Tech, and at other schools only 0%, or .1% can.

I contend that the criteria that are currently being used need some refinement – this is not a likely distribution of innate ability.

As a society, we cannot afford to exclude our best and brightest from our flagship universities. We need all the talent we can get – even talent that has been obscured by lousy parenting and rotten schools.

If being in the top 10% of a high school class is the too high a number to be a good predictor of success, I’m guessing that there is a right number – 8%, 5%, 3%? We owe it to ourselves, and our economic competitiveness as a nation to figure out the right number, and use it accordingly.

Personally, I have seen too many “top” students at our local, rural system, struggle in college. I wonder what variables were controlled for in the study? What dataset was used, and did they use a multiple regression model (or what) to analyze?

My oldest made straight A’s throughout her 12 years at our semi-rural public school. She took every AP class that was available. She graduated 4th in her class and probably would have graduated 2nd if she had dropped down from the AP classes like a couple of the other kids did.

First year at UGA was a struggle. Took her about two semesters to get on track. She told me later that “she didn’t know how to study.”

Think about that one for a minute. A top student at your school who took the hardest curriculum you had to offer doesn’t know how to study??

Lesson learned. We pulled the youngest out and placed her in a top notch private school. Again, a straight A student who was now about one year or so behind her private school peers.

Probably the biggest difference is that a larger school from Cobb or Gwinnett can put 20 students of comparable ability into an AP class and push them all to a higher level. Our school might have 5 students who truly belong in that same AP class and as a result, would have to “ease up” in order to get the other 15 through it.

On the downside, my youngest says that it would probably be easier for her to get into UGA if she were still at our public school. Her GPA would probably be much higher than at her private school.

On the other hand, I feel she is better prepared for college level work.

Everyone certainly has a right to attend college but IMO, every plan has winners and losers. If we adopted the top 10% plan, what would likely happen would be a form of geographic affirmative action, which may or may not be a good idea. The winners would be students from schools that are currently underserved; the losers would be the good but not top 10% students in schools that are currently well-represented. If we accept that not every high school is equally rigorous (a fair assumption I believe), then you may well be lowering standards for some and raising standards for other. Given this dynamic, I am not yet convinced that this tradeoff is worth its costs.

I certainly can understand the case where a student from a rural, poorer area does not have access to AP classes or testing but IMO, college admissions officers should be able to determine that this student demonstrated a passion for learning in spite of this gap (like Maureen mentioned, taking virtual classes or having strong teacher recommendations that detail the student’s achievement in context of their situation). A top 10% plan isn’t a substitute for this.

As a society, we cannot afford to withhold excellent educations from our best and brightest, and the top 10% of EVERY high school should qualify for those opportunities. I think that Texas’ solution is an excellent way to address this; much better than noxious, skin-color-based academic “affirmative action”.