Texas 10% Plan’s Impact on College Enrollment

The Texas Ten Percent Plan (TTP) provides students in the top 10 percent of their high-school class with automatic admission to any public university in the state, including the two flagship schools, the University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M. Texas created the policy in 1997 after a federal appellate court ruled, inHopwood v. Texas, that the state’s previous affirmative-action system based on racial preferences was unconstitutional. Through the TTP Plan, the state sought to maintain diversity in its most-competitive public universities in a race-neutral way. The program soon became the model for similar policies in Florida and California.