Our family met with the College counselor for McNeil High School yesterday, to ask questions about what it takes for a high school student to get automatic admission to Texas state colleges. Here were my questions and his answers; hopefully this will help you.
What does it take to get automatic admissions to Texas public colleges?
In general, the top 10% of a high school's students get automatic admission into state colleges, but only the top 8% get automatic admission to UT.
How is class rank calculated?
Only the four core classes--Social Studies, Science, English, and Math, plus foreign language classes are added into the class rank GPA.
McNeil students have two GPAs, one 4 point based and the other 6 point. The 6 point is used for class rank. (I'm still fuzzy on how to calculate this (4pt GPA * 6/4?)
Often, only the first six semesters of high school grades really count towards college admission, since the deadline for many college applications is before the first semester senior grades are finalized.
What were the GPAs recently to get into those percentages?
For the class of 2012 the lowest 6-point GPA to get into the "top 8%" was 4.89; for the top 10% it was 4.75;
For the class of 2014 the lowest 6-point GPA to get into the "top 8%" was 4.95; for the top 10% it was 4.82;
5.63 was highest 6-point GPA from last year.
Other useful information:
Dec 1st is the deadline for UT admissions, Jan 15th for A&M. Curiously, the A&M scholarship application due date is earlier, Dec 15.
Visit ApplyTexas.org to apply to most state colleges and some private schools in Texas.
