A path to increased representation of top 10% and minority students in Texas college admission

We study the effects of precedence order (i.e. the order in which different types of seats are filled) on college admission under the Texas Top 10% Law, which requires automatic admission for any student who graduated in the top 10% from a Texas high school. Policymakers currently fill reserved seats for top 10% students first, then fill unreserved seats. Using publicly available data, we show that the reserve policy with the current precedence order is equivalent to admission without reserves. We show that switching the precedence order to fill unreserved seats first increases the admission rates for top 10% students and for Black and Hispanic students. By filling unreserved seats before reserved seats, policymakers could increase the representation of racial/ethnic minorities at highly selective colleges.