The Wall Street Journal ran "University of Texas Drops Merit Program for Need-Based Aid" by Tom Benning in the Wednesday Sept. 2, 2009 issue. The article says the University of Texas, Austin, is phasing out its National Merit Scholarship program starting next year.
Plano has a large number of National Merit Scholarship winners. Plano had 128 National Merit Scholarship semi-finalists in 2008. This means that UT does not want Plano's best students. I believe discouraging the brightest students from going to UT will drive down further the SAT scores at UT Austin. We have already seen the SAT scores for Math at UT Dallas surpass the Math scores at UT Austin.
UT's loss will be a gain for UT Dallas, Texas Tech University, and the universities at neighboring states. However, we need to be strengthening UT to raise it as a world class university, not driving it down.
Robert Canright
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