Foreign Students, Immigrants, Domestic Minorities and Admission to Texas’ Selective Flagship Universities Before and After the Ban on Affirmative Action

Abstract

A growing body of research examines the effects of state affirmative action bans on domestic minority students’ application and admission rates. This study expands previous research, considering how Texas’s implementation of a race-neutral percent plan influenced admission opportunities for two understudied groups: foreign students and in-state Black and Hispanic immigrants. Using a census of all applicants to Texas’s flagship universities—University of Texas-Austin (UT) and Texas A&M (A&M)—between 1992 and 2002, descriptive analysis and logistic regressions help examine how the passage of the Top Ten Percent Plan influenced selectivity in terms of observed admission rates and counterfactual admission probabilities for students of varying SAT scores and science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) versus non-STEM-proposed majors for foreign students compared to a variety of in- and out-of-state Black and Hispanic immigrants and domestic minorities. Findings point to salient institutional differences in selectivity for foreign applicants. The surge in UT’s foreign applicant numbers post–Top Ten led to significant decreases in admission rates and increases in average SAT score and STEM foreign admits. Post–Top Ten A&M, on the other hand, maintained numbers of foreign admits on par with UT by accepting a significantly larger percentage of less selective foreign applicants.

INTRODUCTION

A college education is increasingly necessary for middle-class jobs (Kahlenberg, 2008). At the same time, the cost of a 4-year education (particularly at private universities) is increasing faster than the rate of inflation, making a 4-year college education increasingly less affordable for most Americans (Kahlenberg, 2008). Public universities offer among the most affordable bachelor’s degrees for a large segment of 4-year-degree-seeking students, thus creating high demand for admission among domestic applicants from a wide range of racial/ethnic and immigrant backgrounds (Hemelt & Marcotte, 2008; Kahlenberg, 2008). In many cases the largest, oldest, and most prestigious of each state’s public, 4-year universities, state flagships often receive the largest numbers of applicants among all universities in a given state (Hemelt & Marcotte, 2008). Flagship universities generally offer the most prestigious and high-quality, public 4-year education in the state, and at times in the region (Gerald & Haycock, 2006; Hemelt & Marcotte, 2008).

Although demand for higher education from American citizens is on the rise, American universities also attract and admit undergraduate students raised and educated outside the United States, known as foreign (or international) students (Institute of International Education, 2008b; Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education, 2008). The same state flagship institutions in particularly high demand by top-performing in-state students (Gerald & Haycock, 2006) are also increasingly sought after by out-of -state domestic applicants and foreign students (Institute of International Education, 2008b). Although public flagships receive sufficient applicants to fill each class with their own state’s students, they (like their private, 4-year counterparts) admit and actively recruit not only out-of-state domestic applicants but also foreign students (Rizzo & Ehrenberg, 2003).

Although many public flagship universities seek to increase their diversity in the form of undergraduate foreign students, a number of state legislatures—including California’s, Texas’s, and Florida’s—have banned the practice of explicit race preferences in undergraduate admissions at public universities. In the stead of controversies around racial preferences for domestic minority students, some states have passed alternate state-mandated admissions regimes—like the Top Ten Percent Plan, which was passed in Texas in 1998 (Harris & Tienda, 2010; Long, 2004; Texas House Bill 588, 1997). The Top Ten Percent Plan is an admissions plan that considers class rank and grades over SAT or ACT scores when making admission decisions for in-state applicants (Alon & Tienda, 2007). Under the Top Ten Plan, all students who graduate from a Texas high school in the top 10% of their high school’s graduating class and apply for admission to a Texas university are guaranteed admission to the flagship university of their choice (Texas House Bill 588, 1997). The result is that the overwhelming majority of each class—upwards of 75% at the University of Texas at Austin—is filled by students admitted under the prevue of Texas’s percent plan (Fischer, 2005; S. 175, 2009; Texas House Bill 588, 1997).

A growing body of research examines the effects of Texas’s percent plan on domestic minority enrollments at Texas’s flagship universities, the University of Texas at Austin (UT) and Texas A&M (A&M; Alon & Tienda, 2007; Long & Tienda, 2008). However, with a state-mandated shift in the admission criteria for in-state applicants, the implications of the Top Ten Percent Plan for diverse, out-of-state students remain understudied. As the largest out-of-state applicant group at UT and the second-largest at A&M, post–Top Ten era foreign applicants, like their domestic, non-Texas counterparts, continued to be assessed based heavily on SAT scores over grades, particularly because many out-of-state and foreign applicants did not receive or report class rank in their application (Alon & Tienda, 2007).

At the same time, foreign students also experience certain parallels with in-Texas immigrant minority applicants. In addition to many shared origin countries in Latin America and the Caribbean (in addition to Asia, although domestic and immigrant Asian applicants are not considered here for reasons that are later discussed), both foreign and domestic immigrant minority students may come from unique selection regimes into the United States and/or the American higher education applicant pool. As such, foreign and domestic immigrant minority students likely compose more highly-selected groups with above-average prior academic achievement profiles compared to domestic minority Texas applicants. This article compares the differing levels of selectivity¹ in the admission profiles of foreign, in-state immigrant-background minority, and out-of-state (immigrant and domestic) minority applicants compared to the Black and Hispanic in-state applicants who comprise the traditional beneficiaries of racial and ethnic preference programs.

FOREIGN STUDENTS, COLLEGE DIVERSITY, AND GLOBAL COMPETITIVENESS

The mission statements of many selective universities include a phrase indicating the university’s commitment to creating a diverse class of students from a variety of states within the United States and myriad countries around the world (Moiseyenko, 2005; Stevens, 2007; Stevens, Armstrong, & Arum, 2008). More than half of institutions surveyed in 2000 through a collaboration between ACT, Inc. (known for its ACT standardized college entrance exams); The College Board; Educational Testing Services; and Association for Institutional Research reported specifically recruiting foreign undergraduate applicants (Breland, Maxey, Gernand, Cumming, & Trapani, 2002). Fully 57% of reporting institutions acknowledged actively recruiting out-of-state domestic applicants (Breland, Maxey, Gernand, Cumming, & Trapani, 2002).

Composing a racially/ethnically as well as internationally diverse class is one less quantifiable way in which universities improve their global competitiveness. Public universities may admit domestic applicants from surrounding states as part of a regional plan for economic growth, among other reasons. For example, many states commit to reciprocity agreements that enable admitted students attending high schools in either state to pay in-state—or at least reduced—tuition (Rizzo & Ehrenberg, 2003). Public universities’ reasons for admitting foreign students—who rarely fall within the bounds of formal reciprocity agreements—are more ambiguous (Rizzo & Ehrenberg, 2003). At the same time, foreign students—like domestic minority and immigrant minority students (both in- and out-of-state)—bring valued cultural, linguistic, educational, and experiential diversity to colleges (Stevens, 2007). Over the last decade, the competitive edge that foreign undergraduates bring to a university—whether through enhancing campus diversity, strengthening particular disciplines, or otherwise—has become increasingly visible. In the early 2000s, the U.S. News and World Report began publishing a new ranking called “Best Colleges: Most International Students” that runs alongside their commonly cited college ranking system (“Best Colleges,” 2009; “Best Colleges 2009,” 2009). In 2002, ACT, Inc.; The College Board; and Educational Testing Services stated in their report that “public institutions have increased their efforts to recruit out-of-district/out-of-state and international students” (Breland et al., 2002, p. x).

In his 1992 work on college student migration, Mixon was among the first to use individual-level microdata on applicants collected by various universities to model the impact of institutional prestige on percent out-of-state enrollment. Out-of-state enrollment at public universities, Mixon (1992) found, was a function of factors such as the higher tuitions charged to out-of-state students. Mixon’s argument was that, the more “prestigious” a public university, the greater the numbers of out-of-state applicants it would receive, and hence the higher out-of-state tuition it could get away with charging (Mixon, 1992). This piece builds upon the same, basic logic: As a segment of out-of-state enrollment, foreign students are in part desired because their presence at a particular university signals the ascending prestige and global competitiveness of that institution. Although increasing global competitiveness is certainly a part of the puzzle, the relatively newly emergent hype around foreign undergraduates as offering an edge for campus diversity begs numerous understudied questions about why public universities increasingly seek to attract and admit undergraduate foreign students.

For example, public universities are also concerned with maintaining and/or increasing selectivity in their admission processes. Selectivity is often measured through factors like the average SAT scores of admitted students and a university’s ability to attract students from outside the state’s general prevue into high-prestige science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines. Partly a remnant of cold war competition to produce the best and brightest scientists and engineers, scientists and engineers were seen to bring the United States closer to becoming the world’s economic superpower via becoming the zenith of technological innovation and progress (Brown & Bean, 2009; Caboni & Adisu, 2004; Karabel, 2005). Today, admitting STEM students may enhance a public flagship university’s reputation by helping it develop strong departments in the STEM fields. Admitting undergraduate foreign students into the STEM fields is also one way in which public flagships create a pipeline to their graduate training programs. Admitting students from out of state—but particularly foreign students—into the STEM fields points to a university’s strength and increased global competitiveness in addition to its embrace of diversity on an international scale.

Throughout this study, selectivity refers to the academic profile of applicants or admits on the basis of SAT score and proposed major (STEM vs. non-STEM). When I say one group or university is more selective than another, I am referring to their stronger average academic profile. More selective groups have higher average SAT scores and/or concentrations of applicants proposing STEM majors. STEM majors are framed as contributing to the strength of an applicant’s academic profile because of the historical and contemporary prestige associated with advancing science, medicine, and technology.

Trends in undergraduate foreign student admissions at Texas’s selective flagship universities may be emblematic of those at other institutions, but the context of Texas’s percent plan offers a unique case study. Examining changes in admissions outcomes before and after the passage of the Top Ten Law provides a window through which to assess how state-mandated alternatives to racial preference systems may indirectly affect admission opportunities for foreign applicants (Alon & Tienda, 2007; Harris & Tienda, 2010; Long & Tienda, 2008; Tienda & Niu, 2006). Although foreign students comprise only a small fraction of students at selective flagship universities, Texas’s two flagship universities place in the top 25 in the country for the size of their respective foreign student enrollments (Institute of International Education, 2008a, 2008c). UT and A&M actively recruit foreign students even amidst high demand from in-state applicants and only replacement or, in some cases, below-replacement enrollments of domestic minority students compared to their pre-Top Ten Percent levels (Long & Tienda, 2008). The recruitment of foreign students amidst the ban on race-based affirmative action and transition to a non-race-based system points to universities’ seeming paradox of embracing diversity in certain forms—like that of foreign students—while qualifying it in others—via its own domestic minority students. This paradox leads to questions about any changes in the levels of selectivity required for admission for foreign students compared to other groups viewed as enhancing diversity before and after the passage of the Top Ten Percent Plan.

Some of the same institutional priorities that foreign students embody—cultural and geographic diversity—are also enhanced through the admission of domestic minority (henceforth referring to nonimmigrant) students and/or immigrant-background domestic minorities. A wide range of work on affirmative action in American higher education highlights the relatively small number of underrepresented (Black and Hispanic) minority students who are qualified for admission to selective 4-year universities (Bowen & Bok, 1998; Bowen, Kurzweil, Tobin, & Pichler, 2005; Massey, Charles, Lundy, & Fischer, 2003). With the same minority students gaining admission to a variety of selective universities, institutions compete among themselves to matriculate these coveted minority students to their university (Arenson & Rimer, 2004). Attracting members of a small pool of qualified, underrepresented minority students to their university enhances a historically White institution’s institutional status—as opposed to its more quantifiable, average test-score or departmental reputation-driven status.²

At the same time, Professors Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Lani Guinier call attention to universities’ often simplified definitions of minority status, pointing out that a rising share of the students classified by universities as minorities come from immigrant as opposed to domestic, underrepresented minority backgrounds (Arenson & Rimer, 2004). Gates and Guinier urge universities to consider the implications for social mobility among America’s historically underrepresented domestic minority communities if universities continue admitting immigrant minorities under the same auspices of diversity as domestic minority students (Arenson & Rimer, 2004; Gurin, 1999). Although Gates and Guinier refer primarily to selective, private institutions, the phenomenon of less qualified domestic minority students in the pool of 4-year college applicants is certainly relevant to selective, public institutions as well.

One predominating hypothesis for explaining the rising share of immigrant minorities at selective universities is that college-applying immigrant minorities come from a more highly selected population in the United States than do domestic minority students without recent immigrant backgrounds. Work by Portes and Rumbaut posited that post-1965 immigrants are a positively selected group relative to nonmigrants from their country of origin (Portes & Fernandez-Kelly, 2008; Portes & Rumbaut, 2006; Portes & Zhou, 1993). Similarly, Feliciano (2005c) and Massey et al. (1998) argued that, due to the differing entry conditions of immigrant as opposed to domestic minority students, the high levels of selection on observed (educational and socioeconomic, among others) as well as unobserved characteristics (e.g., psychic, motivational, and social capital based) among immigrant minorities are not mirrored among domestic minorities (Feliciano, 2005c). But the domestic minorities who submit college applicants are also a highly selected subgroup of the domestic minority population in the United States. Among applicants who surpass potential barriers to high school graduation and college application, it is unclear whether immigrants and children of immigrants have academic profiles suggesting higher levels of academic selection than domestic minority applicants and, if so, if they gain admission to selective colleges and universities at higher rates.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS

Exploring a new dimension of the implications of Texas’s Top Ten Percent Plan, this article examines how foreign students and Texas’ immigrant-background Black and Hispanic minorities fare before and after the passage of the Top Ten Percent Plan at Texas’s two flagship universities. Specifically, based on overall acceptance rates and standardized admission test scores, how did the passage of the Top Ten Percent Plan influence the levels of selectivity (in terms of admission rates and predicted probabilities of admission net of controls) and the academic profiles (in terms of SAT scores) of admitted foreign students compared to all foreign applicants, admitted in-state Black and Hispanic immigrants and Black and Hispanic domestic (immigrant and domestic) minority applicants to UT and A&M? Second, to what extent did UT and A&M experience a differential squeeze on spots for foreign compared to out-of -state domestic minority applicants after the passage of the Top Ten Percent Plan? Third, did the squeeze on spots for out-of-state (foreign and non-Texas domestic minority) applicants post–Top Ten Percent increase the probabilities of admission for foreign and out-of-state applicants proposing STEM majors at both UT and A&M? Fourth, how did the effects of the Top Ten Plan on foreign students compared to other groups’ probabilities of admission by SAT and STEM major vary between UT and A&M?

RESEARCH DESIGN

Data

This study utilizes restricted-use administrative data from the Texas Higher Education Opportunity Project. Texas Higher Education Opportunity Project administrative data are particularly well suited for this study because they are one of the few of their kind to include information from admissions applications for a census of applicants to Texas’s two public flagship universities over an approximately 10-year period between 1990 and 2000 (years vary by institution). The total number of applicants to UT between 1991 and 2003 was 205,733. At A&M, the total number of applicants between 1992 and 2002 totaled 160,021. Analyses that restricted UT’s years of data coverage to the 10-year period available at A&M returned similar results. As such, results from all 12 years of UT’s reliable data are reported.

At the undergraduate level, UT and A&M are large, well-known institutions that attract a large number of in-state applicants and a smaller, but significant, number of applicants from outside Texas (mainly hailing from surrounding Southern states). Although both universities admitted slightly more than 70% of applicants during the 1990s, UT’s admitted students showed stronger academic profiles. The mean standardized test score of students admitted to UT was 1226, compared to 1,172 at A&M. In addition, over the period for which we have data, an average of 18% of UT’s applicants came from out-of-state compared to 14% of A&M’s applicants.

Variables

The study examines admission probabilities based on a binary dependent variable indicating whether a student gained admission. Table 1 displays descriptive statistics as population means and standard deviations across as well as within universities for the dependent and all independent variables. The primary predictor variable is “group,” which identifies foreign students relative to a variety of groups based on Texas residency, race/ethnicity, and immigrant status shown in Table 1. In addition to foreign students, the comparison groups throughout both parts of the analyses include: non-Texas Blacks and Hispanics (both immigrant and domestic), Texas domestic Blacks and Hispanics, and Texas immigrant Blacks and Hispanics. The characteristics used to distinguish these groups are explained in the section of Table 1 on variable construction. The two primary measures of admission selectivity include average SAT score (or SAT-converted ACT score, both of which serve as a measure of prior academic qualification) and STEM as opposed to non-STEM major indicated in students’ admission application. STEM majors additionally include health, whereas all humanities, social science, vocational, and undecided majors are included in the non-STEM category. Table 1 also lists demographic and prior-achievement controls, including gender, high school type (private, public, or other), whether a student attended high school in-state, whether a student attended a feeder high school (one of the top 20 schools in absolute numbers of students sent to either UT or A&M in 2000; Tienda & Niu, 2006), and whether a student took at least one Advanced Placement exam in high school.

TABLE 1.

Descriptive Statistics for Dependent and Independent Variables Across Universities¹ and Notes on their Construction

	Population		UT		A&M
Variable	Mean	(SD)	Mean	(SD)	Mean	(SD)	Construction
Admission Outcome	0.66	(0.47)	0.61	(0.49)	0.75	(0.43)	= 1 if Admitted
Demographic and Prior Achievement
Group
Foreign	0.17	(0.36)	0.21	(0.41)	0.09	(0.28)	= 1 if non-U.S. citizen and self-identified as ‘international’ on application
Domestic and Immigrant Blacks & Hispanics, non-Texas	0.07	(0.25)	0.05	(0.22)	0.10	(0.30)	= 1 if Permanent Resident or non-U.S. citizen, attended a non-Texas, U.S. high school, and identified as ‘black’ or ‘Hispanic’ (as opposed to ‘international’) on application
Black and Hispanic Immigrants, Texas	0.03	(0.18)	0.03	(0.18)	0.03	(0.16)	= 1 if Permanent Resident or non-U.S. citizen, attended a Texas high school, and identified as ‘black’ or ‘Hispanic’ (as opposed to ‘international’) on application
Black and Hispanic Domestics, Texas	0.73	(0.44)	0.70	(0.46)	0.78	(0.41)	= 1 if U.S. citizen, attended a Texas high school, and identified as ‘black’ or ‘Hispanic’ on application
Male	0.52	(0.50)	0.52	(0.50)	0.52	(0.50)
Took 1 + Advanced Placement exam	0.18	(0.38)	0.16	(0.36)	0.22	(0.42)	= 1 if student submitted scores for at least one Advanced Placement (AP) exam taken in high school SAT variable used in logistic regressions is centered around 1090.07. Quadratic and
SAT or SAT-converted ACT score	1090.07	(161.26)	1101.98	(164.38)	1069.42	(155.83)	cubic SAT terms included in logistic regressions are centered around the population mean before exponentiation.
Proposed STEM major	0.49	(0.48)	0.37	(0.48)	0.69	(0.46)	= 1 if student proposed a science, technology, engineering, math, or health major in college application
School-Level Characteristics
High School Type
Public	0.72	(0.44)	0.68	(0.47)	0.80	(0.40)	= 1 if University identifies high school as a public school
Private	0.09	(0.28)	0.08	(0.28)	0.09	(0.29)	= 1 if University identifies high school as a private school
Missing/Unclassified	0.19	(0.38)	0.24	(0.43)	0.11	(0.31)	= 1 if University cannot identify or classify high school type as public or private
Feeder High School	0.09	(0.29)	0.09	(0.28)	0.10	(0.29)	= 1 if high school is one of the top 20 to have the largest absolute numbers of students admitted to either UT or A&M in 2000 (See Tienda et al., 2003).
In-state (Texas) applicant	0.79	(0.40)	0.75	(0.43)	0.85	(0.35)	= 1 if attended a high school in Texas and is therefore eligible for admission under the Top 10 Percent Plan (12% and 17% of foreign applicants to UT and A&M
Top 10 Percent Plan Years (1998–)	0.50	(0.50)	0.53	(0.50)	0.46	(0.50)	= 1 if ‘year’ is 1998 or later

NOTE: Logistic regression models include these variables in addition to group × SAT (centered at across-university population mean), group × SAT^2, group × SAT³, and group × STEM interactions.

¹Population means and standard deviations are weighted by proportion of applicants at each university. Population means are then used in predicting predicted admission probabilities.

Analytic Strategy

In light of existing research (Alon & Tienda, 2007; Long & Tienda, 2008) that examines how domestic minorities fare after the passage of the Top Ten Plan within the context of the wider White and Asian applicant pool, this study excludes Whites and Asians to instead focus on how foreign students compare to groups that are historically underrepresented at 4-year selective universities and are therefore targeted at least in part to increase college diversity. The groups identified in this study include foreign applicants and in- and out-of-state domestic Black and Hispanic minority immigrant and domestic applicants. Foreign students are non-U.S. citizens of any race who receive their primary education outside the United States and identified on their college application as foreign/international (referred to in this study as foreign students). Domestic refers to American-educated underrepresented minority students—namely, Blacks and Hispanics. Minority is used as an umbrella term for American-educated Blacks and Hispanics, some of whom are nonimmigrants (domestic minorities), whereas others are immigrant minorities. Immigrant minorities are non-U.S. citizens who were born outside the United States but were schooled in the United States from an early age and therefore apply to college as domestic applicants. Permanent residents are identified as immigrants because permanent residency entails having been born outside the United States even though the process of naturalization has been initiated. Some students identified as domestic may in fact be naturalized immigrants but are nonetheless classified as domestic due to lack of information to identify naturalized citizens apart from native-born citizens.

Prior work (Feliciano, 2005a, 2005b, 2005c) shows immigrants’ varying levels of positive educational selection relative to nonimmigrants from their origin countries have an effect on children’s college enrollment in the United States. The question of whether in-state Black and Hispanic immigrant applicants to Texas’s flagships are more highly selected (on observed prior academic achievement or other unobserved characteristics) than domestic Black and Hispanic applicants in the United States remains understudied. In-state Texas immigrant-background Black and Hispanic students offer a relevant comparison because, like foreign students, immigrant applicants may exhibit higher levels of positive selection on observed factors—like academic qualification—or on unobserved characteristics—like persistence—that may be associated with coming from families who may have overcome the financial, psychic, legal, and social barriers to immigration (Massey et al., 1998). I investigate this hypothesis with regard to differences in the strength of the academic profiles of admitted foreign and immigrant applicants relative to domestic Blacks and Hispanics. Finally, out-of-state domestic applicants are an important comparison for foreign students. Comparing foreign and non-Texas minority applicants helps overcome the threat to internal validity that would result if the study lacked a group that continued to be assessed for admission based largely on the same criteria (i.e., SAT score and proposed major) as foreign students without offering the university the same edge on global competitiveness as foreign students.

Throughout the analysis, Black and Hispanic students are grouped together for parsimony and because the numbers of Black applicants are limited, reflecting the demographic composition of Texas high school graduates (Harris & Tienda, 2010; Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, 2007; Institute of International Education, 2008c). Results from analysis disaggregating each group indicated strikingly similar results for Blacks and Hispanics.³ In addition, immigrant and domestic out-of-state Blacks and Hispanics are reported as an aggregate group because results do not change noticeably but cell sizes and predictive power increase. Although ethnically heterogeneous groups, for this study’s purposes, the aggregation of Blacks and Hispanics is substantively supported by other studies finding Black and Hispanic first- and second-generation immigrants to be a less positively selected group than first- and second-generation Asian immigrants (Feliciano, 2005b, 2005c).

Methods

Treating immigrant minority and domestic minority students—both from within and outside Texas—as comparison groups for foreign students, this study examines how foreign, immigrant minority, and domestic nonimmigrant minority students’ average applicant profiles based on SAT score and proposed major influence their admission rates and probabilities and whether admission rates and probabilities change after the passage of the Top Ten Plan. To assess the influence of the Top Ten Percent Plan on each group’s admission probabilities, comparisons are made both within and across Texas’s two flagship public universities (UT and A&M) before and after the passage of the Top Ten Percent Plan. Following a large body of econometric research on differencing strategies within natural experiments (Ashenfelter, 1978; Card, 1990; Conyon, Girma, Thompson, & Wright, 2002), much of the analysis in this study relies on differencing and differences-in-differences to control for the effects of time-invariant factors and isolate the effects of the Top Ten Plan on changes in various groups’ admission probabilities. Separate analyses are reported for each institution (see Figure 1).

FIGURE 1.

Foreign student applicants and admits at University of Texas-Austin (UT) and Texas A&M (A&M).

Paying particular attention to how admission rates vary by SAT and STEM versus non-STEM proposed major, the first part of the analysis charts basic admission rates for foreign students compared to various domestic minority groups. Calculated without controlling for observed confounding factors, the basic admission rates used in the first part of the analysis allow me to understand how underlying compositional differences in measures of selectivity like SAT score and proposed major are in reality associated with admission rates for foreign students compared to other groups. The second part of the analysis adds demographic, prior achievement, and high school characteristic controls (shown in Table 1) to logistic regressions to enable more causal inference about groups’ differing predicted probabilities of admission after accounting for each groups’ differing levels of selection into the applicant pool.

RESULTS

Table 2 displays cell sizes and admission rates of foreign students compared to three subgroups of Black and Hispanic immigrant and domestic applicants by institution before and after the passage of the Top Ten Plan. Before the passage of the Top Ten Plan, UT’s basic admission rate for foreign students was 31%, or 21 percentage points higher than that of A&M. The chi-squared significance tests reported in column 15 indicate that this institutional difference in foreign students’ acceptance rates was significantly larger than that of non-Texas Black and Hispanic applicants and in-state domestic minorities. At UT, foreign applicants experienced a significantly smaller average percentage-point reduction in the percentage of applicants admitted after the passage of the Top Ten Plan than did out-of-state Black and Hispanic applicants. Table 3 displays mean standardized test scores of applicants by group and institution before and after the Top Ten Plan.

TABLE 2.

Applicants and Admission Rates, by Group, Policy Regime, and Institution

	UT (1991–2003)							A&M (1992–2002)							Institutional Admission Differences (% UT-% A&M)
	Overall		Pre-Top 10		Post-Top 10		Pre-Post Top 10 %- Point Diff3 = (4)–(6)	Overall		Pre-Top 10		Post-Top 10		Pre-Post Top 10 %-Point Diff3 = (11)–(13)	Pre-Top 10 %-Point Diff3 = (4)–(13)	Post-Top 10 %-Point Diff3 = (6)–(13)	Pre-Post Top 10 Diff-in-Diff %-Point Diff3 = (15)–(16)
Group1	N (total)	% of All Apps2	N (admit)	% (admit)	N (admit)	% (admit)		N (total)	% of All Apps2	N (admit)	% (admit)	N (admit)	% (admit)
	(1)	(2)	(3)	(4)	(5)	(6)	(7)	(8)	(9)	(10)	(11)	(12)	(13)	(14)	(15)	(16)	(17)
Non-Texas
Foreign	10,869	5	1,330	31	1,710	26	5	2,593	2	650	52	758	56	−5	−21	−31	10
Domestic and Immigrant Blacks & Hispanics	2,709	1	788	56	601	46	10*	3,000	2	1,255	71	624	50	21***	−15+	−4***	−11***
Texas
Immigrant Blacks & Hispanics	1,765	1	624	66	559	68	−2**	818	1	411	88	262	74	14***	−22	−6***	−16***
Domestic Blacks & Hispanics	35.487	17	12,845	74	12,445	68	6	22.919	14	10,535	85	7.482	72	13***	−10***	−3***	−7***
Total	50,830	25	15,587	65	15,315	57	8	29,330	18	12,851	81	9,126	68	13	−15	−11	−4

¹’Domestic’ refers to non-immigrant students who apply from within the United States. ‘Immigrant’ refers to students who were born outside the United States but who attended a Texas high school. ‘Foreign’ refers to students who were born outside the U.S. and attended non-U.S. high schools.

²Total university enrollment at UT-Austin between 1991–2003 was 205,733 (including whites and Asians). Total university enrollment at A&M between 1992–2002 was 160,021 (including whites and Asians).

³T-tests for significance are based on differences between foreign students and each comparison group.

^***Significant at .001,

^**Significant at .01, and

^*Significant at .05, and

⁺Significant at .10.

TABLE 3.

Mean Standardized Test Scores (SAT or equivalent¹) of All Applicants and Admits, by Group, Policy Regime, and Institution

	UT (1991–2003)					A&M (1992–2002)				Institutional Differences in Mean Test Scores of Admit—All
	Pre-Top 10		Post-Top 10		Pre-Top 10-Post–Top 10 Diff = (2)–(4)	Pre-Top 10		Post-Top 10		Pre-Top 10-Post–Top 10 Diff = (7)–(9)	Pre-Top 10 Diff = (2)–(7)	Post-Top 10 Diff = (4)–(9)	Diff-in-Diff: Pre-Top 10 Post-Top 10 Diff = (11)–(12)
Group2	All	Admit	All	Admit		All	Admit	All	Admit
	(1)	(2)	(3)	(4)	(5)3	(6)	(7)	(8)	(9)	(10)3	(11)3	(12)3	(13)3
Non-Texas
Foreign	1140	1264	1181	1286	−22	1147	1208	1205	1254	−46	56	32	24
Domestic and Immigrant Blacks & Hispanics	1133	1228	1134	1214	14***	1111	1164	1116	1169	−5***	64***	45***	19
Texas
Immigrant Blacks & Hispanics	1066	1123	1069	1095	28***	1095	1115	1099	1116	−1***	8***	−21***	29***
Domestic Blacks & Hispanics	1076	1124	1087	1120	4***	1102	1125	1108	1134	−9***	−1***	−14***	13*
Total	1091	1141	1112	1141	0	1106	1133	1119	1146	−13	8	−5	13

Note: Standard deviations in parentheses.

¹Where SAT was not provided, converted ACT scores were substituted.

²’Domestic’ refers to non-immigrant students who apply from within the United States. ‘Immigrant’ refers to students who were born outside the United States but who attended a Texas high school. ‘Foreign’ refers to students who were born outside the U.S. and attended non-U.S. high schools.

³T-tests for significance are based on differences between foreign students and each comparison group.

^***Significant at .001,

^**Significant at .01, and

^*Significant at .05, and

⁺Significant at .10.

At UT, although foreign applicants experienced a significantly larger percentage-point reduction in percentage admitted compared to in-state immigrant applicants, their admitted foreign students became increasingly positively selected, with an average increase in SAT score of 22 points post–Top Ten compared to a decrease in SAT-based selectivity among both out-of-state and in-state minority applicants. In contrast, foreign students at A&M experienced a 5 percentage point increase in admission rates after the Top Ten Plan with admitted foreign students also more positively selected after the passage of the Top Ten Plan. Compared to other groups, foreign applicants admitted to A&M experienced a significant 46-point increase in average SAT score. At the same time, however, the difference in the pre- and post–Top Ten average SAT score decreased for A&M’s out-of-state and in-state minority applicants. After the passage of the Top Ten Plan, foreign students at UT were admitted at an even lower rate on average over the 1998 to 2003 period than were post–Top Ten foreign applicants to A&M—whose average, basic admission rate actually increased by 4 percentage points. After the passage of the Top Ten Plan, UT’s average admission rate for foreign students diverged significantly from that of A&M’s such that the institutional difference in admission-rate-based selectivity was significantly larger than the difference in selectivity for each other group, including out-of-state minorities (see columns 16 and 17 of Table 1). Much of UT’s heightened selectivity was driven by a faster rate of increase and larger absolute numbers of foreign applicants in the post–Top Ten Plan era compared to A&M. Of interest, although A&M admitted disproportionately high shares of foreign applicants compared to other groups post–Top Ten, it continued to admit an increasingly positively selected group of foreign students. Between 1998 and 2002, the difference in average SAT score for A&M’s admitted foreign students shrunk relative to foreign students at UT. Post–Top 10, the average SAT score for A&M’s admitted foreign students came on par with those of domestic and immigrant applicants from outside Texas (shown in column 13 of Table 3).

Table 4 breaks down the cell sizes and admission rates for applicants by group, policy regime, and institution shown in Table 1, examining applicants who proposed majors in the STEM and health fields separately from non-STEM-proposing applicants. Columns 11 and 22 of Table 4 show both UT and A&M admitted a higher percentage of STEM applicants in the post–Top Ten compared to pre–Top Ten era, significantly more than each other group, each of which experienced a decrease in their average, basic admission rate for STEM majors post–Top Ten compared to pre–Top 10. The higher acceptance rate for STEM foreign applicants post–Top Ten was more pronounced at UT than at A&M, as shown in column 23, with UT averaging a significantly higher admission rate for STEM foreign applicants compared to other groups of applicants than at A&M. By contrast, the admission rates for non-STEM applicants pre– versus post–Top Ten did not differ across institution for any group except out-of-state domestic and immigrant minorities, who experienced a more pronounced decrease in admission rate post–Top Ten at A&M than at UT (although this is offset by the fact that A&M had a higher mean basic admission rate for non-STEM applicants in both pre– and post–Top Ten periods to begin with; see column 24 of Table 4).

TABLE 4.

STEM vs. Non-STEM Applicant and Admission Rates, by Group, Policy Regime, and Institution

Group1	UT (1991–2003)											Institutional Differences in % Admitted (% UT-% A&M) Pre-Post Top 10 STEM admits %-PointDiff-in-Diff3 = (11)–(22)
			Pre-Top 10				Post-Top 10				Pre-Post Top 10 STEM Admits %-Point Diff = (4)–(8)
	Overall		STEMAdmits		Non-STEMAdmits		STEMAdmits		Non-STEMAdmits
	STEM N	Non-STEM N	N	Admit/Apply (%)	N	Admit/Apply (%)	N	Admit/Apply (%)	N	Admit/Apply (%)
	(1)	(2)	(3)	(4)	(5)	(6)	(7)	(8)	(9)	(10)	(11)	(23)
Non-Texas
Foreign	5,787	5,082	770	8	560	4	1,061	11	649	4	−3	−1
Domestic and Immigrant Blacks & Hispanics	934	1,775	307	3	481	3	227	2	374	2	1*	−3***
Texas
Immigrant Blacks & Hispanics	691	1,074	293	3	331	2	231	2	328	2	1*	0***
Domestic Blacks & Hispanics	11,591	23,896	5,063	54	7,782	53	4,817	50	7,628	44	5**	−7***
Total	19,003	31,827	6,433	69	9.154	63	6,336	65	8.979	52	4	−9
Group1	A&M (1992–2002)
			Pre-Top 10				Post-Top 10				Pre-Post Top 10 STEM Admits %-Point Diff = (15)–(19)	Pre-Post Top 10 Non-STEM admits %-PointDiff-in-Diff3 = ((6)–(10))–((17)–(21))
	Overall		STEMAdmits		Non-STEMAdmits		STEMAdmits		Non-STEMAdmits
	STEM N	Non-STEM N	N	Admit/Apply (%)	N	Admit/Apply (%)	N	Admit/Apply (%)	N	Admit/Apply (%)
	(12)	(13)	(14)	(15)	(16)	(17)	(18)	(19)	(20)	(21)	(22)	(24)
Non-Texas
Foreign	2,265	328	566	5	84	2	658	7	100	2	−2	0
Domestic and Immigrant Blacks & Hispanics	2,019	981	872	8	383	8	404	4	220	5	4**	−2***
Texas
Immigrant Blacks & Hispanics	581	237	308	3	103	2	173	2	89	2	1	0
Domestic Blacks & Hispanics	15,274	7,645	7,116	65	3,419	69	4,953	54	2,529	60	11***	0
Total	20,139	9,191	8,862	81	3,989	81	6,188	68	2,938	69	13	−1

¹’Domestic’ refers to non-immigrant students who apply from within the United States. ‘Immigrant’ refers to students who were born outside the United States but who attended a Texas high school. ‘Foreign’ refersto students who were born outside the U.S. and attended non-U.S. high schools.

²Total university enrollment at UT-Austin between 1991–2003 was 205,733 (including whites and Asians). Total university enrollment at A&M between 1992–2002 was 160,021 (including whites and Asians).

³T-tests for significance are based on differences between foreign students and each comparison group.

^***Significantat. 00 1,

^**Significantat .01, and

^*Significant at .05, and

⁺Significant at .10.

Table 5 shows predicted probabilities and their differences across group, STEM versus non-STEM-proposed major, policy regime, and institution net of a variety of demographic, prior achievement, and high school characteristics (see Table 1 for a full listing). Predicted probabilities are calculated at the grand mean across institutions and can be interpreted as those for the average applicant across UT and A&M. Predicted probabilities can be interpreted as counterfactuals—indicating what probability of an applicant from a particular group with average characteristics across both universities would have experienced had she or he applied before or after the passage of the Top Ten Plan. Some readers may choose to think of the predicted probabilities as representing simulations. Pre–Top Ten foreign applicants with across-institution population-mean values for all control variables would have experienced significantly lower predicted probabilities of admission compared to an average individual in each of the other groups at both UT and A&M. After the passage of the Top Ten Plan, the admission probability of a foreign applicant with population-average characteristics would have increased at both UT and A&M at the same time it would have decreased for an individual with population-average characteristics from each of the other groups. For example, a foreign male applicant to UT who attended a Texas public high school, did not take any Advanced Placement exams in high school, and proposed a non-STEM major would have had a 29.4% chance of being admitted before the Top Ten Plan was passed but a 32.4% chance of being admitted after the Top Ten Plan—a 3 percentage point increase in admission probability. A Black or Hispanic non-Texas resident with the same profile, on the other hand, who had a 63.8% chance of being admitted before the Top Ten Plan and a 59.8% chance of being admitted after the Top Ten Plan would therefore have experienced an overall 4 percentage point decrease in admission probability. A foreign applicant’s increase in admission probability was significant in comparison to the decrease that would have been experienced not only by the non-Texas resident Black or Hispanic student with population-average characteristics but by each of the Texas resident groups as well. Therefore, although the margin of increase in admission probabilities across institutions was modest, it was significantly larger for a foreign student with population-average characteristics at A&M than at UT. Unlike a foreign applicant with the across-institution population average characteristics previously described who would have experienced a larger admission probability at both UT and A&M after the Top Ten Plan, the passage of the Top Ten Plan would have been associated with a decrease in admission probability for individuals with population-average characteristics in each U.S.-applicant pool (both in and out of state, immigrant and domestic) at both institutions, as shown in columns 5 and 11 of Table 5. The difference in admission probabilities for a foreign student with population-average characteristics across institutions would have been larger after the passage of the Top Ten Plan as a foreign applicant with population-average characteristics would have had a higher probability of admission at A&M after the passage of the Top Ten Plan than before it compared to a corresponding foreign applicant to UT after the Top Ten Plan as opposed to before it (see column 17 of Table 5). The larger increase in predicted probability of admission for a foreign student with population-average characteristics at A&M versus UT after compared to before the Top Ten Plan contrasts with the increase in predicted probability of admission for an individual with population-average characteristics in each of the domestic comparison groups. An individual with population-average characteristics in each of the domestic groups would have experienced a smaller reduction in admission probability at UT post–Top Ten than to A&M post–Top Ten, suggesting UT’s popularity for Top Ten applicants after the passage of the Top Ten Plan. Nonetheless, as at UT, predicted admission probabilities for individuals with population-average characteristics in each domestic and immigrant Texas and non-Texas applicant group would have decreased in the post–Top Ten era at A&M.

TABLE 5.

Predicted Probabilities and Percentage Point Differences in Probabilities of Admission, by Group, STEM vs. non-STEM Proposed Major, Policy Regime, and Institution²

Group1	UT (1991–2003)						A&M (1992–2002)						Institutional Admission Differences (% UT-% A&M)
	Pre-Top 10		Post-Top 10		Pre-Top 10-PostTop 10 %-Point Diffs3		Pre-Top 10		Post-Top 10		Pre-Top 10-PostTop 10 %-Point Diffs3		Pre-Top 10 %-Point Diffs		Post-Top 10 %-Point Diffs3		Pre-PostTop 10 Diff-in-Diff
	Overall	STEM	Overall	STEM	Overall = (1)–(3)	STEM = (2)–(4)	Overall	STEM	Overall	STEM	Overall = (7)–(9)	STEM = (8)–(10)	Overall = (1)–(7)	STEM = (2)–(8)	Overall = (3)–(9)	STEM = (4)–(10)	Overall = (5)–(11)	STEM = (6)–(12)
	(1)	(2)	(3)	(4)	(5)	(6	(7)	(8)	(9)	(10)	(11)	(12)	(13)	(14)	(15)	(16)	(17)	(18)
Non-Texas
Foreign	.294	.267	.321	.324	−.027	−.057	.623	.540	.674	.545	−.051	−.005	−.329	−.273	−.353	−.221	.024	−.052
Dom. & Immig Hispanics	.638***	.627***	.598***	.606***	.040***	.021	.851***	.781***	.626	.519*	.225***	.262***	−.213*	−.154*	−.028***	.087***	−.185**	−.241**
Texas
Immigrant Blacks & Hispanics	.760***	.764***	.717***	.792***	.043***	−.028*	.953***	.933***	.822	.762**	.131***	.171**	−.193	−.169	−.105**	.030**	−.088**	−.199**
Domestic Blacks & Hispanics	.881***	.896***	.765***	.875***	.116***	.021**	.932***	.894***	.778	.718***	.154***	.176***	−.051***	.002***	−.013***	.157***	−.038**	−.155**
Total	.643	.638	.600	.649	.043	−.011	.840	.787	.725	.636	.115	.151	−0.197	−.149	−.125	.013	−.072	−.162

¹’Domestic’ refers to non-immigrant students who apply from within the United States. ‘Immigrant’ refers to students who were born outside the United States but who attended a Texas high school. ‘Foreign’ refers to students who were born outside the U.S. and attended non-U.S. high schools.

²As shown in Table 4, predicted probabilities include controls for: 1) Individual demographic and prior achievement characteristics (gender, in-state Texas resident indicator, whether or not a student took at least one AP exam in high school, SAT/converted ACT score along with quadratic and cubic SAT terms to account for non-linearities, and proposed STEM or non-STEM major); 2) School-level characteristics (private and ‘feeder’ high school indicators), and 3) Interactions between group × SAT (as well as group × SAT² and group × SAT³) and group × major.

³Chi-squared tests for significance are based on differences between foreign students and each comparison group.

^***Significant at .001,

^**Significant at .01, and

^*Significant at .05, and

⁺Significant at .10.

Corroborating results reported for STEM applicants in Table 5, Figure 2 shows group admission probabilities by institution before and after the passage of the Top Ten Plan, distinguishing STEM from non-STEM majors for purposes of examination of STEM major as a measure of selectivity. For STEM applicants in particular, the predicted probability of admission for a foreign student with population-average characteristics would have increased modestly at both UT and A&M after the passage of the Top Ten Plan, but the modest increase would have been slightly more pronounced at UT than at A&M, as seen in column 18 of Table 5. By contrast, the predicted admission probabilities for a STEM applicant of each of the other groups with population-average characteristics would have decreased after the passage of the Top Ten Plan at both UT and A&M, but the decrease would have been more pronounced at A&M than at UT (see columns 6, 12, and 18 of Table 5). The single exception to this pattern, however, is immigrant Black and Hispanic STEM applicants at UT, who, like foreign STEM applicants, would have experienced a modest increase in predicted admission probability after the passage of the Top Ten Plan.

FIGURE 2.

Group admission probabilities by major and institution, pre- and post–Top Ten Plan. Note. UT = University of Texas-Austin; A&M=TexasA&M; STEM=science, technology, engineering, and mathematics; TX=Texas; Dom.= domestic; Hisp. = Hispanic; Immig = immigrant.

The findings highlight a discrepancy between the results of the admission rates without controls and the counterfactual predicted probabilities. For example, at UT, the basic admission rates without controls indicate that, in reality, it became harder to gain admission as a foreign applicant to UT post–Top Ten. On the other hand, counterfactual predicted probabilities indicate it would have become easier—though the magnitude differences in predicted probabilities are modest, at best, and nonsignificant compared to within-group, pre–Top Ten predicted probabilities. This seeming contradiction highlights the importance of underlying compositional differences between groups before compared to after the passage of the Top Ten Plan. That is, a foreign applicant with the same average observed characteristics of any group of student who would have applied to both UT and A&M would have had a higher admission probability post–Top Ten compared to pre–Top Ten. However, because the pool of foreign applicants became more positively selected post–Top Ten, his or her predicted probability of admission would have increased despite the counterveiling force of the admission squeeze. In reality, the admission squeeze as a result of a large number of spots automatically filled by Top Ten in-state applicants led to a decrease in the admission probabilities for foreign applicants at UT. The fact that this discrepancy does not arise at A&M points to a noteworthy phenomena: The squeeze on admission spots appears to converge post–Top Ten as a larger proportion admitted from each nonforeign applicant group increase at A&M and the difference in proportions of domestic applicants admitted closes between the two institutions (see columns 15–17 of Table 1). Of interest, despite this squeeze on admission spots, A&M continued to admit a greater share of its foreign applicants. The increase in the average admission rate (without controls) for foreign applicants to A&M suggests the increase may be driven by an increase in the degree of underlying positive-selection into the applicant pool taking place among foreign applicants to A&M. It is unsurprising that this increase in selectivity in the academic profiles of foreign applicants did not take place at UT considering that the academic profiles of UT’s foreign applicant pool were already quite strong.

Figure 3 shows predicted admission probabilities for individuals of each group with population-average characteristics on all observed variables except SAT score. For gradual increases in SAT score, there would have been marked differences in admission probabilities for individuals with population-average characteristics from each group before as compared to after the Top Ten Plan was passed. After the passage of the Top Ten Plan, there would have been a clear divergence in predicted admission probabilities by SAT score between individuals with population-average characteristics from in-state versus out-of-state groups. Shallower slopes for in-state domestic and immigrant applicants indicate dampened increases in admission probabilities associated with rising SAT scores from the population-mean SAT for individuals with population-average characteristics from all groups. For in-state applicants, this reflects the pronounced emphasis on grades and class rank as opposed to test score in admission practices. For out-of-state applicants who continued to be assessed heavily on SAT scores, predicted probabilities indicate a heightened selectivity regime in which the pay-off of higher SATs became more pronounced after the passage of the Top Ten Plan. Post–Top Ten, both UT and A&M admitted on average more selective out-of-state applicants. Figure 3 shows that admission probabilities for foreign applicants and non-Texas minorities with population-average characteristics but below-population-average SAT scores would have decreased post–Top Ten. In contrast, admission probabilities for foreign applicants and non-Texas minorities with population-average characteristics would have increased for individuals with above-population-average SAT scores. At A&M compared to UT, this effect is more pronounced for foreign compared to out-of-state domestic applicants, reflecting A&M’s higher admission rates for foreign applicants compared to those at UT post–Top Ten. For a number of reasons, A&M was particularly committed to increasing its enrollment of foreign students even after the squeeze on admission spots in the post–Top Ten era. Given caps on out-of-state enrollments, supposing UT had already reached its maximum capacity for foreign students, it is not surprising it did not increase its foreign student enrollments.

FIGURE 3.

Group admission probabilities by SAT score and institution, pre- and post–Top Ten Plan. Note. UT = University of Texas; STEM=science, technology, engineering, and mathematics; h.s.=high school; TX=Texas; Dom.= domestic; Hisp. = Hispanic; Immig = immigrant.

DISCUSSION: INSTITUTIONAL SELECTIVITY AND FOREIGN STUDENTS AS SIGNALS OF ASCENDING GLOBAL COMPETITIVENESS

This study uses a unique data set consisting of a census of all applicants to Texas’s two public flagship universities in the wake of Texas’s postaffirmative action era to highlight a group—foreign students—that is little examined in the context of institutional efforts around diversity. Foreign students are an increasingly important part of college and university diversification efforts and will figure prominently in future debates about how colleges and universities in the United States define college diversity and its importance in an international higher education marketplace (Bowen et al., 2005; Stevens, 2007). Using a dual-pronged analytic strategy of comparing basic admission rates (without controls) to admission probabilities that incorporate controls, this study seeks to understand the prima facie effects of the Top Ten Plan as well as a set of counterfactuals that would be expected if applicants from each group exhibited the same observed demographic and academic characteristics. Predicted probabilities approach more causal arguments about the underlying factors that contribute to differences in admission rates after accounting for observed differences in the underlying composition of each group’s applicant pool before and after the passage of the Top Ten Plan.

Based on examination of Texas’s flagship public universities, UT and A&M, this study’s findings support hypotheses about the increasing desireability of foreign students at slightly less selective public flagships like A&M. Even amidst the squeeze on spots for in-state applicants after the passage of the Top Ten Plan in 1998, A&M admitted foreign applicants at a higher rate than before the squeeze brought on by the Top Ten Plan. Predicted admission probabilities corroborate the descriptive findings in that an individual with population-average characteristics—that is, a foreign, male applicant to UT who attended a Texas public high school, did not take any Advanced Placement exams in high school, and proposed a non-STEM major—would have experienced a higher predicted probability of admission at A&M post– compared to pre–Top Ten Plan even though predicted admission probabilities would have, on average, decreased for in- and out-of-state Black and Hispanic immigrants as well as domestic Texas applicants with population-average characteristics.

On the other hand, foreign applicants to the slightly more selective UT experienced a decrease in their admission rate after compared to before the passage of the Top Ten Plan. Of interest, foreign applicants to UT would have experienced modest increases in their admission probabilities had their profiles reflected the population-average characteristics previously mentioned. That is, even though foreign applicants to UT became more selected along lines of average SAT score post– compared to pre–Top Ten Plan, compositional differences from the population averages in their demographic and other prior academic performance characteristics offset our counterfactual predictions of increases in admission probabilities. The observed decrease in overall admission rates for foreign applicants to UT post–Top Ten reflects this reality.

At a time when the United States continues to seek the best and brightest STEM students, this study also investigates whether foreign and immigrant students tend to come from more positively selected and STEM-heavy academic backgrounds, on average, than domestic minority students. Findings from both the observed admission rates and counterfactual predictions align closely. Both foreign and Texas immigrant black and Hispanic STEM applicants to UT experienced (and were predicted to experience) a modest increase in predicted admission probability after the passage of the Top Ten Plan. STEM applicants to UT from each other group possessing population-average characteristics experienced a significant decrease in admission probabilities post– compared to pre–Top Ten. At A&M, predicted admission probabilities for foreign applicants with population-average characteristics remained virtually unchanged before and after the Top Ten Plan. Predicted admission probabilities for all nonforeign students, including Texas minority immigrants, further corroborate observed rates, predicting that nonforeign applicants would experience significant decreases in admission rates compared to those for foreign applicants post– versus pre–Top Ten. In terms of SAT score, both UT and A&M showed signs of heightened selectivity on the basis of SAT score among admitted foreign undergraduates compared to other groups of admitted applicants post–Top Ten, but the degree of heightened selectivity is more pronounced at the slightly more selective UT. These findings suggest some partiality in favor of STEM foreign and Texas minority immigrants to UT and of foreign (but not Texas immigrant) applicants to A&M. If all applicants possessed population-average characteristics, STEM majors among the most selected applicant groups (foreign applicants at both UT and A&M and Texas immigrant minorities to UT) would have earned some admission preference.

UT’s particularly pronounced selectivity among foreign applicants is largely the result of a surge in its numbers of foreign applicants beginning in the mid-1990s. Beginning at approximately the same time, UT’s ability to admit foreign students was limited by a squeeze on admission spots accompanying the passage of the Top Ten Plan. At A&M, the numbers of foreign applicants did not surge, but the percentage of admitted applicants—and their respective admission probabilities controlling for a variety of factors—did. The result: A&M came to admit numbers of foreign undergraduates on par with UT but was somewhat less selective in the SAT scores of those foreign students it admitted.

These findings are best understood in the context of the practices guiding admission decisions at public universities. Public universities are funded largely with state tax dollars and are grounded on institutional missions to serve their state’s residents. As such, some public 4-year universities with high levels of legislative oversight place caps on the numbers of out-of-state (including foreign) students they can enroll (Gerald & Haycock, 2006; Rizzo & Ehrenberg, 2003). Despite highly selective flagship universities, like UT, already trending toward their maximum politically and legislatively acceptable levels of foreign student enrollments, the last decade in particular has witnessed gradual increases in the numbers of out-of-state undergraduates—including foreign students—applying, gaining admission, and enrolling at less selective 4-year public universities (Rizzo & Ehrenberg, 2003). As a result, out-of-state and foreign undergraduate enrollments at many slightly less selective public universities are coming onto par with enrollments of these same groups at already-selective flagships (Gerald & Haycock, 2006; Institute of International Education, 2008b; Mixon, 1992).

The desire of public universities to admit foreign students despite the squeeze on admissions spots from in-state applicants reflects foreign students’ desirability and highly selected nature (Institute of International Education, 2008b). Foreign applicants often hail from prestigious and competitive-admission (often private) secondary schools with a pipeline to American universities (Stevens, 2007). Many foreign applicants to American universities also come from families with sufficient social and financial capital to support overseas higher education. As such, universities may admit foreign applicants to help fill a variety of interrelated institutional priorities, such as (a) attracting a diverse group of students from around the world who enhance students’ educational experience by increasing their exposure to cultural, geographic, and ethnic diversity (Stevens, 2007); (b) admitting at least a portion of their class that can afford to pay full tuition (i.e., admitting full-freight students as a way to generate revenue for the university and place less burden on the endowment or tax dollars),⁴ and (c) composing a class that encompasses a wide range of disciplines of major including but certainly not limited to students who will feed into the university’s STEM pipeline. Foreign students in general and STEM foreign students in particular not only strengthen the university’s global competitiveness but later may contribute to the United States’s graduate education programs and/or the American labor market (Breland et al., 2002; Caboni & Adisu, 2004). The presence of foreign students also signals to other potential foreign applicants and the higher education community that a university is able to attract highly qualified students (e.g., based on measures like SAT scores) from around the world (Bowen et al., 2005). Certainly, these priorities are not mutually exclusive, and in many cases more than one priority is enhanced through the admission of particular groups of students. Foreign students, for example, may bring cultural and educational diversity as well as help boost a university’s STEM pipeline into graduate education.

That predicted admission probabilities for both foreign and Texas immigrant Black and Hispanic STEM applicants held constant rather than decreasing amidst the squeeze on spots from in-state domestic minorities after the passage of the Top Ten Plan lends some support to the theory that both groups were positively selected on major in addition to SAT, especially after the passage of the Top Ten Plan. This phenomenon is at least partly explained by the fact that both Texas immigrant minorities and foreign applicants experienced some degree of positive selection on academic characteristics post–Top Ten—although certainly of modest magnitude. This is likely because the applicant pool in each group became more selected in and of itself and/or because institutions began admitting more selective applicants from these groups. In particular, for admitted foreign students at both UT and A&M, noticeable increases in average SAT scores after the passage of the Top Ten Plan highlight positive selection as a major part of the story.

In addition to the squeeze on admission spots for out-of-state applicants in the wake of the Top Ten Plan, the tightening of student visa regulations after the 9/11 attacks in the United States may also have adverse effects on the ability of universities to maintain the same admission standards for foreign students if there was a decline in the numbers of applicants as a result of awareness of tightened visa regulations. Of interest, these findings show that the numbers of foreign applicants to both UT and A&M increased substantially in the wake of the Top Ten Plan and that both universities admitted an increasing share of foreign applicants without compromising SAT- and STEM-based selectivity among admits. These findings are particularly significant in light of previous work (Brown & Bean, 2009) showing foreign STEM enrollments declined significantly at the graduate education level in the post-9/11 era after increasing steadily until that point. The study points to tightened visa review procedures as a likely cause of the decline, finding that enrollments in the STEM fields did not decline among permanent resident/citizen graduate students (Brown & Bean, 2009). Although my study does not directly investigate enrollment rates, the finding that neither UT nor A&M—two of the United States’s largest and selective public flagship universities—experience a similar downward trend in admission rates is noteworthy, especially because foreign STEM undergraduates are an important pipeline into graduate education in the United States.

Much of this study emphasizes that foreign students possess a variety of sought-after qualities that may further boost their chances of gaining admission were it not for state caps on out-of-state enrollments and the squeeze on spots resulting from the Top Ten Plan. However, foreign students’ admission probabilities are limited by the fact that, as noncitizens and non-Texas residents, they do not benefit from preferential admission policies, such as affirmative action or alternative policies that rose in lieu of affirmative action. Particularly compared to in-state minority students who also bring educational and cultural diversity to their university, foreign applicants also face stiffer competition for admission because they must be admitted from an already highly selected pool of foreign students (EduPass! The SmartStudent Guide to Studying in the USA, 2010). Our findings largely corroborate common perceptions that it is more difficult to gain admission as a foreign student than as a domestic in-state applicant, and particularly as an in-state minority student (Office of Admissions, University of Texas at Austin, 2008; USA Study Guide, 2007).

Despite its contributions in the relatively understudied area of foreign student admissions at the undergraduate level, this study opens possibilities for future research. First and foremost, future projects should seek to generalize findings beyond Texas. Second, future analysis of immigrants should attempt to identify a more appropriate measure of immigrant status. Without data on birthplace of applicants, this study relied on citizenship status, treating immigrants as those who attended high school in the United States and are permanent residents or noncitizens, indicating they were born outside the United States. A number of applicants treated as domestic, however, may in fact be naturalized citizens who immigrated into the United States at a young age. Finally, future research should identify data with larger numbers of minority immigrants—particularly those outside Texas. In this study, many of the logistic coefficients for the immigrant groups were not significant, but it is possible that their nonsignificance is due to a lack of statistical power rather than lack of substantive differences. As such, future research in this area would enable more reliable analyses of the comparisons between foreign students and immigrants and generalize to broader trends in foreign admissions if it were to include data from flagships in a variety of states and if it could include a large-enough group of immigrants with more accurate information on birthplace.

AUTHOR BIO

Jayanti Owens is a Joint Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Sociology and the Office of Population Research at Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey. Her interests include stratification, education, immigration, demography, quantitative research methods, and social policy.