all it the ''compassionate conservative'' alternative to affirmative action.
Instead of picking minority students for Texas universities based on their race, Governor George W. Bush signed a law in 1997 that guaranteed a spot for all students who graduated in the top 10 percent of their high school class.
The idea had an immediate, egalitarian appeal: All applicants would be judged strictly by their performance. And yet, at urban schools where black or Hispanic students are predominant, minorities would surely fill the top 10 percent as well, getting into public campuses by virtue of their own pluck.
But, rather than emerge as the national model some Texas officials hoped for, the plan has run into a wall from Massachusetts to Washington, where officials criticize the idea as simplistic. Though Florida recently adopted a Texas-style policy, officials in other states say the 10 percent rule allows the admission of too many unqualified students and promotes diversity only in states with highly segregated high schools.
''We don't think it solves anything,'' said Joseph Marshall, who oversees enrollment at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, which has scaled back affirmative action and rejected the idea of basing admission on class rank.
''The results aren't an across-the-board increase in diversity. It's a real shortsighted approach,'' Marshall said.
A chief drawback, said Thomas J. Kane, a Harvard University professor who has studied the plans, is that the policies will not promote diversity in states that do not have heavily segregated high schools. The policy wouldn't help in New England, where relatively few schools are filled with minority students and only 3 percent of seniors in the top 10 percent are black or Hispanic.
In Texas, the class-rank law has brought more minority students to some elite campuses. But freshmen admitted under the policy have lower Scholastic Assessment Test scores than past classes, partly reflecting an influx of students from low-performing schools. Kane said a disproportionate number of students admitted to college under the new ruleswho have low test scores are black or Hispanic.
But Ray Sullivan, a spokesman for Bush, said such criticisms ignore the policy's appeal as a compromise between divisive racial preferences and strict, merit-based standards.
At the University of Texas at Austin, the state's most elite public school, the 10 percent policy has increased diversity in enrollment. More black and Hispanic freshmen are enrolling now than in 1996, the year a federal appeals court rejected racial preferences at public campuses. And those who were in the top 10 percent are more likely to become sophomores than other classmates.
True, SAT scores among the students at Austin who were in the top 10 percent of their high school classes are down: About 250 had scores below 1,000 last year, compared with 133 in 1997.
Still, Sullivan said, the class-rank policy ''rewards achievement and provides access to students regardless of whether they're from the Texas border or the Texas suburb, so long as they study and work hard.''
Bush has championed the policy as ''affirmative access,'' a way of broadening opportunities for students without playing favorites. His Democratic rival for the White House, Vice President Al Gore, strongly supports the use of affirmative action to promote diversity on campuses.
Specialists said the best preparation for college is a challenging high school curriculum. Class rank, on the other hand, can be deceptive when students attend low-performing schools.
But the debate over Texas's law, which Bush had modest involvement with until he signed it, has centered more on the problems with affirmative action than the right standards for getting into college. Officials in some states pan it as a narrow and simplistic replacement for preferences.
Washington state officials weighed a policy similar to Texas's after voters banned affirmative action in 1998. At the University of Washington, black and Hispanic freshmen enrollments plummeted by more than 30 percent after the ban took effect. More black freshmen are expected this fall, but Hispanic numbers are expected to decline again, to 106 out of about 4,900 freshmen. In 1998, 196 out of 4,200 were Hispanic.
But John Swiney, the university's associate director of admissions, said most Washington schools are too integrated for class rank to increase diversity. He added that the policy lacks the nuance needed to draw students with a range of abilities and experiences.
''When we read students' essays, it gives us a much better insight into the qualities of the individual beyond the numbers,' Swiney said. ''Not all students come from a level playing field, and there are many barriers on the road to academic success.''
Officials at the University of Michigan, whose affirmative action policy is being challenged in federal court, said they also have decided against Texas's policy.
''It's one-dimensional, and we want to consider the whole person when making admissions decisions,'' said Liz Barry, an associate vice president at the university.
A proposal to admit the top 15 percent to Pennsylvania colleges was on a fast track earlier this year, but has been put off until winter, officials said. According to an analysis at Harvard, about 46 percent of black students and 26 percent of Hispanics are in largely segregated high schools in Pennsylvania, suggesting a Texas style policy could boost minority enrollment.
Pennsylvania's governor, Tom Ridge, a Republican and a close ally of Bush, may push for the plan, state officials say.
But aides to Paul Cellucci, the governor of Massachusetts and a Bush supporter, say the concept isn't on the drawing board for colleges in that state.
''There are a number of high schools in Massachusetts that frankly don't have class rank,'' said Michael Sentance, the governor's education adviser.
''Those that have high standards have done away with class rank. It may or may not be the best way of looking at this issue.''
Sentance said a better alternative would be to recruit minority students more aggressively. The governor, he hinted, might unveil such an initiative this fall.
At a time when schools nationwide are seeking to increase the number of their graduates attending college, guidance counselors in Boston and Lawrence said Texas's policy would help their students, but only if it were expanded to open access for the top 20 percent to 25 percent of high school classes and provided scholarships. California officials blanched at such a large percentage, saying it would hurt academic quality.
Eileen M. Khoury, coordinator of guidance in Lawrence, said one problem is that schools calculate class rank differently. Some give special weight to honors courses, for example.
''You could have a kid taking a weaker academic program being in the top part of your class,'' said Khoury, who also works in Lawrence High School, where most of the students are Hispanic.
But Penda D. Hair, a civil rights lawyer who used a Rockefeller Foundation grant to study Texas's policy, said class rank reveals the workhorses who won't give up, even if they feel unprepared at first for a university education.
''Percent plans like Texas's do a better job of giving you students who have grit, who have determination, and who can succeed in the long run,'' Hair said.
