At a special meeting of the University of Tennessee Board of Trustees on Thursday night, the state university system adopted a new policy to guarantee college admission to certain in-state applicants.
Effective immediately, Tennessee high schoolers applying to a University of Tennessee school with the following credentials will automatically be accepted to at least one school in the state university system:
- Students who graduate in the top 10 percent of their high school’s graduating class
- Students who graduate with a 4.0 grade point average
- Students who graduate with at least a 3.2 grade point average and who score at least 23 on the ACT college admissions test or who score at least 1130 on the SAT college admissions test
“In taking this step, the UT System would join public institutions in at least a dozen other states, including Arizona, Florida, and Texas, which offer guaranteed admissions to eligible students,” said the resolution upon which the Board of Trustees voted. “University admissions officials project that this change would have a positive effect on the number of Tennesseans choosing to apply to and enroll at one of its campuses.”
While admission is guaranteed to the university system school to which an eligible student applies, students are not guaranteed acceptance into a particular college, school, department, major, or program.
There are also some other guidelines.
Students must meet all application deadlines to be considered eligible. Their class ranks and grade point averages will be based on their transcript at the end of their sixth high school semester, which is the final semester of their junior year of high school and the University of Tennessee – Knoxville will require a minimum ACT “subscore” of 19 in math and English.
A statement of impact was included with the resolution.
In 2021, 28% of Tennessee’s public high school students who graduated with a 3.75 GPA or higher chose to go out of state for college. By offering automatic admission to its top high school graduates, prospective students will know earlier in the college selection process that there is a place for them at their state’s top public university system. They will only be an application away from being admitted.
In 2022, Tennessee’s public high schools graduated 64,580 students. Using this total as a baseline, UT’s new guaranteed admission policy would make upwards of 6,400 prospective students automatically eligible for admission to the university in 2024. During that same year, 15,939 (27.7%) of Tennessee’s high school graduates had an ACT composite score of 23 or higher.
Recently, the University of Tennessee system expanded its UT Promise scholarship program, allowing students from families who make $75,000 per year or less apply for UT Promise scholarships. Previously, only students whose families earned $60,000 or less per year could qualify.
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Pete D’Abrosca is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Pete on Twitter.
Photo “University of Tennessee Knoxville Students” by University of Tennessee Knoxville.Â
