Saith the Lone Star Girl: Go, Broncs!

On Wednesday, the Lone Star Baby and I took the Lone Star Girl down to Edinburg for a tour of the University of Texas-Pan American.  She has been determined for months and months now that this is where she is going to college, no matter what anyone else says.  She did the research herself and I can't find any flaws at all in her reasoning, although many people around us are rather dismayed at her choice.

The Lone Star Girl is biology-bound with an eye towards medical school, which is, from all the sources we've seen, at an all time high of Crazy-Impossible-To-Get-In-To.  This being the case, she has her eye on the conditional acceptance programs that a small number of Texas medical schools run at a small number of Texas universities (JAMP is at more, but requires more financial need than we have).  These are special pre-med programs that students may apply to and, if they are accepted into the pre-med program (which is decided by the medical school), and they maintain the minimum GPA set by the program and get the MCAT score set by the program, they are automatically accepted into the medical school.  UTPA has more of these programs than any other university in Texas and a truly excellent acceptance rate from the programs into the medical schools with which they have the relationships, meaning that the students are making the grades and the MCAT scores needed.  Also, even outside of the conditional acceptance programs, the acceptance rate of UTPA students into medical school beats the amoebas out of the state average.  The Girl figured this out all by herself and has spent a good deal of time convincing me.  As far as I can tell (and my middle name is not Meticulous-Ann for nothing), she is right on the money.  The college and career counselors at her school concur and are firmly behind her plan.  The only person I know with real family-and-friends ties to the faculty agrees.  

Random family members and other people, however, are aghast.

Many people have an attitude about South Texas schools - believing firmly they they are not good enough for a very good student like the Lone Star Girl.  Like most big schools, however, I think the truth is that there are strong programs and weak programs in these schools.  That may not be true of the flagship schools, but I think it is pretty true of all the other state universities.  I would love the Lone Star Girl to go to UT and get to try living in Austin for awhile, but she is not interested in being a small fish and, honestly, UT does not give almost anyone significant money.  As for A&M, she does not want to go that far and she does not want to be at such a bastion of conservative tradition, even if they would give her money, and what they would offer might well still leave an awfully lot to loans.  

So much for the flagships.

UTPA's biology programs seem very strong.  At least three major Texas medical schools - UTHSC, UTMB and Baylor -  seem to think so.  It's what she wants.

Safety comes up a lot in these conversations with various people and that is definitely an argument that gets me worried and web-surfing, believe it.  No matter how much I believe that this argument is mostly racism talking and then getting spread around until nice people believe it, too ... we are also talking about my kid, so I am going to want to be sure that's all it is.

Except that you can't really be sure, can you?  That's the hard part.  

In the last five years, the Texas-Mexico border area has become a horrible, violent, terrifying drug war - on the Mexican side. The cartel members certainly cross over to Texas and even live here, but so far there is little evidence that they are killing uninvolved Americans on this side of the line.  Crossing over these days is not an acceptable risk (to me), but are Texas towns like Brownsviile and McAllen safe?  That is the question.  There have always been racist, alarmist people who never felt safe that close to the border but they were never worth listening to.  Since things have gotten so bad across, it is harder to say.  I have read stories about things that have happened, but they happened in places like North Texas and Chicago, too, not just the Texas border.

I have heard a lot of people describe Brownsville as super-dangerous and scary now, but the Girl and I have spent plenty of time in Brownsville for Girl Scouts and it is really, truly fine, as much as any real city ever is.  I would feel completely comfortable with the Lone Star Girl going to school there.  I have not spent any real time in the McAllen/Edinburg area in recent years, though, so I have nothing to go on.  

It seemed fine when we visited, however, and all the students seemed like regular smart, busy college students who felt safe and at home on their campus.  I have to admit that the campus (and town) has nothing on the gorgeousness of other South Texas universities like UTB and TAMUK, but beauty is not a giant factor in the Girl's decision.  She says it looks like UTSA which she visited for a UIL event recently, so much so that she thinks the state must have used the same designers for the two campuses.  

We had a very nice tour of the campus and the dorms and a meeting with the Biology department, which was very encouraging about her chances of acceptance into one of the programs but which also gave good advice about how to be competitive.  The person we spoke to knew about her high school and knew it had an IB program.  She was completely thrilled when she saw the chart that showed how much college credit which IB test scores would garner at the university, saying that they seemed to understand IB credit better than any other school she'd seen.

She still sounds convinced.  I'm proud of how maturely she has approached this whole process so far.