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| Mark Matson for The New York Times |
| The University of Texas at Austin. |
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| Mark Matson for The New York Times |
| Jenny Rosen, right, made the top 10 percent of her graduating class. Her twin, Debbie, didn't - and lost the chance to pursue her chosen major at the University of Texas at Austin. |
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| Mark Matson for The New York Times |
| Cecilia Lara was automatically admitted to the University of Texas after graduating in the top 10 percent from one of Houston's poorest high schools. Her father had a sixth-grade education, her mother had none. |
Cecilia Lara's family thinks it's a miracle that she's in college. Her father, a roofer, has a sixth-grade education. Her mother never went to school, period. They waded across the Rio Grande from Mexico and worked for years in the shadows of the Texas economy as illegal immigrants before getting residency.
Roberto Farias, on the other hand, always expected to go to college. He just didn't have the money. His mother cleaned houses and office buildings, and when Roberto and his brother fought as boys, she would make him scrub toilets. He does not want to do that for a living.
.Debbie Rosen has done everything possible not just to go to college but to go to the college of her choice. Her father, a dermatologist, emphasized achievement. Her test scores and grades are outstanding. Her life has not been shaped by hardship, but she has worked hard.
These three students have never met. Two are graduates from one of Houston's poorest high schools, the other a senior at one of its richest. But they do share this: high hopes, determination and lives altered by Texas' top 10 percent law, the much-publicized college admissions program whose influence has been felt across the nation. The premise of the law, which took effect in 1998, is seemingly simple: students who finish in the top 10 percent of their graduating class earn automatic admission to the Texas public university of their choice. But as the students' stories show, the law's impact is anything but simple.
For Ms. Lara, 18, bright and serious, the law has meant salvation. The obvious path for her would have been a community college or the University of Houston, a commuter school. Instead, fifth in her class at John H. Reagan High School, she qualified for the University of Texas' flagship campus at Austin and a special scholarship. Last semester, her first, went well: four A's and a B. But during spring break, she anxiously checked the university's Web site every day, waiting for midterm grades to be posted. It's important she do well. ''I'm the only child who went to college,'' she explains.
For Mr. Farias, 19, college has been a struggle so far. He, too, graduated from Reagan in the top 10 percent. He enrolled last summer on a special scholarship at Texas A&M, the legendary land-grant university in College Station, but got an F in math. His grades improved in the fall, but he still had to petition A&M officials to keep his scholarship. During spring break he was also glued to his computer: he must make a B-plus average this spring. ''I had never asked for help in high school,'' he says. ''But I finally let go of my ego and asked.''
For her part, Ms. Rosen has been checking the University of Texas admissions Web site for months -- to see if she has been admitted at all. She is a senior at Bellaire High School, which boasts 58 national merit finalists in its current senior class. The valedictorian is headed to Stanford, the salutatorian to Harvard. Competition to make the top 10 is so fierce that students sometimes break down crying during exam weeks.
Ms. Rosen, 17, had fallen just short -- a 4.48 grade point average, enough to rank at the top of most high schools but not at Bellaire, where she placed 79th, or in the top 12 percent. Her twin sister, Jenny, had a 4.52, for a ranking of 66th, making her the last person in the top 10. So while Jenny was admitted to the Austin campus in December and invited to apply to an honors liberal arts program, Debbie has been waiting and worrying. ''Had I gotten an A instead of a B in one more class, I would have been in the top 10 percent,'' she says. ''It's disheartening when your state school doesn't want you. It makes you feel really bad about yourself.''
The 10 percent law is a response to the Hopwood decision, a 1996 federal appeals court ruling that struck down affirmative action in Texas and caused a sudden drop in the number of minority students enrolling at Texas A&M and the University of Texas. By admitting the cream of every high school, the law intends to make higher education accessible to disadvantaged students -- mostly minorities -- who were often overlooked.
The concept has become remarkably popular with educators as well as politicians in both parties; California and Florida have since instituted percent plans, and other states have expressed interest as affirmative action is increasingly put on the defensive -- a federal appeals court ruling on racial preference in University of Michigan admissions is expected shortly, and the University of Georgia is scurrying to devise new admissions criteria after its system was struck down last year.
But if the Texas law represents a good- faith effort at remedy, its birth was hurried and its ultimate impact uncertain. Now, four years after the first percenters arrived on a university campus, educators can more accurately consider these basic questions: Does the plan restore minority enrollment and improve access to the state system? And how has it affected the educational system, both at universities and high schools?
The answer to the first question is a qualified yes. Before Hopwood, enrollment never reflected the diversity of the state, but the decision damaged many of the gains that had been achieved by Hispanics and blacks. The success of the 10 percent law has been in reversing that trend, though the results are uneven.
At the University of Texas at Austin, considered a trailblazer in tailoring scholarships and recruitment to the law, the percentage of non-Hispanic whites among incoming freshmen is at an all-time low -- 61 percent compared with 65 percent in 1996. Hispanic enrollment has recovered to the 14 percent level that existed before Hopwood. But the primary beneficiaries of the law have been Asians, who now constitute nearly 20 percent of the incoming class but make up just 3 percent of the state's population. And the university still struggles to recruit black students: they make up 3 percent of incoming freshmen, down from 4 percent pre-Hopwood, though they constitute 12 percent of the state's population.
''We haven't found that magic that makes the numbers jump quickly as we have with Hispanics and Asians,'' the university's admissions director, Bruce Walker, concedes. ''We have a lot of history to overcome.''
The improvement in minority enrollment has been slower at Texas A&M, though the same basic trend prevails. ''We're not there yet,'' says Joseph Estrada, assistant provost for enrollment.
University administrators and lawmakers continue to tweak the law. Fearing a legal challenge, officials at A&M recently withdrew a new proposal to offer automatic enrollment to the top 20 percent at selected low-income, predominantly minority high schools. Austin has just started the ''Keep Texans in Texas!'' plan, which matches scholarship offers from out-of-state universities made to students in 130 high schools that have historically sent few graduates to the university.
Gary Orfield, co-director of the Civil Rights Project at Harvard, says that it is these efforts -- recruitment, financial aid, academic support -- that attract and retain minorities. The law alone is only a foundation. ''If you have a percent plan without those, you don't have too much,'' he says.
Among the unexpected byproducts of the plan is that it accelerates the nascent trend of de-emphasizing the SAT. The board of regents of the University of California, which began a top 4 percent plan this academic year, is expected to vote in July on dropping the SAT reasoning test, in part because of concerns that it does not reflect high school curriculum but also because it favors middle- and upper-income families.
For percenters who qualify for automatic admission, the SAT is irrelevant. Ms. Lara scored 1,200 and Mr. Farias a 950, and both got in. The percentage of Austin freshmen who scored less than 990 on the SAT -- far below the school mean of 1,202 -- has more than doubled since 1996. And the percentage of incoming freshmen who scored above 1,200 has declined.
Critics of percent plans have two major complaints: First, that marginal SAT scores mean students who are ill prepared for college-level work. Second, that qualified students at competitive suburban high schools and private academies -- students with high scores and rigorous course loads who are near the top 10 -- are being squeezed out of the public education system or not getting into the school of their choice.
The University of Texas answers the first charge by pointing to its data. Most top 10 percenters get better grades than non-top 10 students, even those who scored 200 or 300 points higher on the SAT. ''These kids are prospering, they are doing well here,'' says Julia Gilbert, a vice provost.
Regarding the second complaint, officials blame ''misunderstanding'' for the perception that only top 10 students are getting in. Slightly more than half of all incoming freshmen are top 10 percenters -- a modest 7 percent increase since the Hopwood decision. Still, admissions is far more competitive, if only because the number of applications has skyrocketed, from 14,000 to 22,000.
''Our job is to serve the whole state,'' says Larry R. Faulkner, the University of Texas president. ''There is not any mechanism of rationing admissions to the university that is going to be perfectly fair in anybody's eyes. There is none.''
THE drive to Texas A&M is only about 90 miles from Houston, but the distance divides different worlds. If Houston is an urban melting pot, A &M is pure country and proud of it. Throughout its history, the university has been overwhelmingly white.
Roberto Farias, university officials hope, represents part of a more diverse future. Friendly and gregarious, he did not grow up dreaming about A&M as so many teenagers in Texas do. Before the new law, A&M might not have even accepted him -- his SAT was 250 points below the average.
Freshman year has been bumpy. He picked one of the toughest majors -- engineering -- and has been struggling to regain academic footing since failing math. In the fall he made an A, a B and a C but dropped math and physics. This semester, he is taking math again, as well as history, political science and a class called ''Science in the News,'' which he describes as ''a G.P.A. booster.''
''I was used to the slow pace,'' he says of high school.
That inequities exist among public schools won't surprise anyone: rich schools like Bellaire enjoy far more resources than poor schools like Reagan. In Texas, that means students can now qualify for admission without having taken a full complement of college-prep courses.
''The state of Texas has defined that those who have achieved top 10 percent status have some coequal academic preparation,'' says George Scott, an educational researcher and watchdog from Houston. ''And that is absolutely 100 percent a lie.''
For years, in fact, university officials have complained that the state's public schools do not adequately prepare students. A recent University of Texas study shows that the most rigorous majors, including business and the sciences, have seen a decline in grade point averages since the top 10 law was enacted. Last year, state lawmakers passed a bill requiring students to have taken a college-prep curriculum to qualify for top 10 percent admission, beginning in 2004.
Overall, though, officials at both Texas A&M and the University of Texas say the demand for traditional remediation has not increased. They think the top 10 students are more focused, disciplined and accustomed to fighting to succeed, regardless of their high school. Still, both universities have started support programs.
A&M's ''Aggie Access'' provides smaller classes for core freshman courses, as well as tutoring on a volunteer basis. The program at the University of Texas is larger. It was created partly because the first waves of low-income top 10 students had a lower freshmen retention rate than the rest of the class. Now, all 626 recipients of Longhorn scholarships, which are geared for students at 70 low-income high schools, are required to participate; counselors help structure schedules, include them in interdisciplinary seminars and steer them to small courses taught by the best teachers.
Ms. Gilbert, the vice provost who oversees the program, insists it is not remediation but guidance for students who are unfamiliar with the college world. Of the Longhorn recipients, 46 percent have parents who did not attend college and 33 percent have parents who have no degree. The plan seems to be working: the retention rate for Longhorn scholars is now roughly equal to the rest of the class.
At Texas A&M, Mr. Farias is starting to taste success. He attended workshops with teaching assistants and his midterm grades showed improvement: all B's and a C. He had been thinking about changing his major. Now he thinks he'll stick it out.
AT the end of spring break, the Austin campus finally accepted Debbie Rosen. But it was not all good news. She wants a career in graphics and advertising, so she applied to the university's popular school of communications. But it had filled up, as had her second choice, art. Instead, she was placed in liberal arts; she could not pursue her chosen major.
''It was a hollow admission,'' says Ted Rosen, her father.
At the guidance office at Bellaire High School, decorated with pennants from top institutions like Skidmore, Harvard, Stanford and North Carolina, counselors have grown accustomed to the fears of parents. A few years ago, after speculation was rampant that students outside the top 10 percent were in trouble, the University of Texas admissions director visited the school to assuage such concerns.
''I refer to it as the top 10 percent mythology,'' says Bill Lawson, a counselor. ''This notion that you've got to be in the top 10 to go to A&M or U.T. is a myth.''
But parents are not mollified. They point to a higher number of students getting only provisional admission -- meaning they must maintain a B average at a less-prestigious state institution and then enter Austin as a sophomore -- or, like Ms. Rosen, not getting into the school of their choice. In fact, the University of Texas' business and communications schools are so overwhelmed by top 10 applications that they have limited their slots to give others a chance.
At the Kinkaid School, a leading private school in Houston whose alumni include President Bush, the headmaster, Don North, says the top 10 law hit his students ''like a brick wall'' two years ago. Usually, 45 Kinkaid students apply to the Austin campus, with almost all gaining admission. But two years ago, 21 students were admitted provisionally. One student whose score on an advanced placement test had exempted her from freshman English was required to take it again because of her provisional status. ''It was crazy,'' he says.
The sudden competition for entrance to the Austin campus and Texas A&M has exposed the weakness of other campuses in the state system, Mr. North says. He says Texas needs to pour resources into the University of Texas at San Antonio or at Dallas to make them more appealing. Otherwise, he thinks more students will either turn to private universities within Texas or state universities elsewhere.
This year, Kinkaid is sending 11 students to the private Southern Methodist University in Dallas, a noticeable increase from years past, as well as more students to Texas Christian University in Fort Worth and Trinity University in San Antonio. He says four students are going to the University of Mississippi while others are looking at Louisiana State University.
''These are kids who in the past would have preferred to go to Texas and would have gone to Texas,'' he says.
The pressure to make the top 10 has reshaped education in other ways. At Jesse H. Jones High School in Houston, which is divided between a magnet program for gifted students and a neighborhood school, magnet students invariably dominated the top 10 percent of the class. The principal has recommended dividing the school into two, at least on paper, to give students in the regular school a chance. Last year, a similar arrangement was approved for a magnet/neighborhood high school in Austin.
The law has also introduced a certain gamesmanship at schools like Bellaire. For example, an A is worth 4.0. But an A in an advanced placement course is worth 5.0. To get that extra point toward their cumulative grade point average, students cluster A.P. early in their high school careers, delaying as many regular courses as possible until senior year. Every fraction counts in making the top 10 before admissions time.
As for Debbie Rosen, the acceptance at Austin was welcome but possibly too little too late. She had already missed the deadline to apply for the honors program. Along with her sister, she had been accepted to the University of Georgia and University of North Carolina and could pursue her major at both. Debbie is leery about leaving home, and her parents are not excited about paying out-of-state tuition, but for now she is leaning toward North Carolina. Whatever she decides, the twins plan to go together.
''Not only will they lose one,'' says Dr. Rosen about Texas, ''they'll lose two.''
FIVE years ago, when Armando Alaniz became principal at Reagan High, the school was no hotbed for college recruiters. Nearly all his students were Hispanic and were poor enough to qualify for the free lunch program. The average SAT score was below 900. Recruiters from the University of Texas and Texas A&M came for college night, but that was about it.
No longer. Suddenly Reagan's poverty and ethnicity are a plus. With race no longer considered in granting scholarships, the universities have instead focused on family income. And since the poorest schools often have large minority populations, the fact that public schools in Texas are largely segregated has become a tool to diversify higher education. The University of Texas acted first with the $20,000 Longhorn grant aimed at specific low-income high schools.
''To be honest, I could care less about what the politics are -- give my kids an even playing field and I feel they can compete,'' Mr. Alaniz says. ''Our kids have a right to the same opportunities as other kids in the state.''
The Longhorn scholarship is the most tangible way to lure poor students. ''Colleges have to say to low-income applicants, 'We want you,' not simply, 'We don't care if you're low income,''' says Robert Shireman, program director for higher education at the James Irvine Foundation, a grant-giving organization in California.
In a recent study, the foundation found that of the nation's 40 top-rated institutions, the six with the most low-income students attract them by emphasizing such outreach. ''We are explicitly interested in students who have overcome disadvantage,'' says Richard Black, head of admissions at the University of California at Berkeley, which ranked second in the Irvine study.
The California system, which was barred from using affirmative action in 1996 by Proposition 209, is also broadening its ''comprehensive review'' policy for next fall's freshman class: now all applicants will be assessed using subjective factors like overcoming economic hardship.
There is no question that Cecilia Lara has faced hardship, and that aggressive outreach by the University of Texas is why she is now at the Austin campus. She swears she had not even heard of the University of Texas before. Her parents could not offer any advice in assessing colleges and researching scholarships. The Longhorn made it easy.
''I hate to think where I would have ended up,'' she says now.
Ms. Lara finally got her midterm grades over spring break: a B on her history paper and an A on her biopsychology exam. She originally thought she would teach Spanish. Now she's not so sure. The world is much bigger than she had realized. Suddenly her options seem limitless.
