Drawing on the bold Texas experiment that guarantees automatic admission to high schol students who graduate in the top 10 percent of their class, Tienda debunks the myth that high-performing students from low-performing schools cannot succeed in college, questions the wisdom of emphasizing standardized test scores rather than grades as a metric of academic achievement, and elaborates on the potential dividend of capitalizing on the growing diversity of Texas’ school-age population for maintaining the state’s competitiveness nationally and globally.