10% Rule is Unfair

My tenth blog really does not have much to do with the media, but it is an issue that has recently effected me.  I am from Houston, Texas and went to a very prestigious high school where everyone works very hard and is very intelligent.  The state of Texas has a rule that states anyone in the state who qualifies to be in the top ten percent of their high school’s graduating class will get automatic admission to any public state university of their choice, which includes University of Texas at Austin and Texas A & M in College Station, the two most popular public universities in Texas.  For a high school that is very competitive, this rule is not very fair.  My good family friend recently got rejected from UT at Austin because they had already admitted about eighty five percent of the students they are allowed to admit for a year just from the ten percent rule alone.  This leaves no wiggle room for those students who are very intelligent, but attend a competitive high school.  This is not fair for those students who go to a school where they make 300 points higher on the SAT then the students at another public school, but since their classmates are smarter, they are not in the top ten percent of their class.  I read an article in the Economist that stated that by the year 2013, one hundred percent of the students accepted into University of Texas at Austin will fall in the ten percent of their high school.  I also read that the state of California has a rule that says the top twelve and a half percent state wide at any high school get accepted into a University of California of their choice.  People are trying to abolish the ten percent rule in Texas, and I think that they should do something like California so that the kids who attend really competitive private and public schools will not get screwed over for going to school with smart kids.