Her mother teases her with nicknames of "bookworm" and "nerd," but the teasing is filled with pride for her oldest daughter. Even though Diana Medina initially struggled in school and cried every night when the family first crossed the Rio Grande, she soon learned English, made the Honor Roll, and is now third in her class.

Juan Maldonado's parents also came from Mexico, but before he was born. Growing up in Houston, he has long planned to aid astronauts from inside NASA's Mission Control. "I don't want to just sit around watching the TV. I have goals," he says, "dreams."

Diana and Juan are two of the most accomplished students in their senior class at Houston's Milby High School, with 4.45 and 4.26 grade-point averages, respectively. This fall, Diana will attend either Texas A&M University or Rice. Juan will go to the University of Houston. But neither believes a premier state college would have been an option without Texas's top 10 percent plan, which became law in 1998.

The plan is simple: Students finishing in the top 10 percent of their graduating classes - from public or private schools - earn automatic admission to the Texas university of their choice. It's the state's response to a 1996 appeals-court ruling that banned affirmative action in a case known as Hopwood v. Texas.

The issue has gained renewed attention since the US Supreme Court agreed to hear two lawsuits challenging the University of Michigan's admission policies, which give minority students a leg up at both the undergraduate and law-school levels. In a White House press conference, President Bush denounced what he called "quota systems" and formally opposed Michigan's admission policies in a legal brief to the court. At that same news conference, he hailed percentage plans - like those in California, Florida, and Texas - as a way to bring diversity to campuses without using race. Later this month, the Bush administration is expected to ask the Supreme Court to participate in April 1 oral arguments.

But academics who have studied the percentage plans say they're less successful than race-based admissions - and certainly would not work in states with smaller minority populations. Today, The Civil Rights Program at Harvard University releases two studies on the plans in California, Florida, and Texas - arguing, in each case, that they are not effective alternatives to race-conscious affirmative action and, indeed, that their limited success is due mainly to race-conscious outreach.

"[The 10 percent plan is] better than nothing, but it's much worse than considering race," says Douglas Laycock, a professor at the University of Texas law school who helped defend his school's previous admissions policy in front of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. "Everybody wants a magic bullet that increases diversity without considering race. Well, there isn't any magic bullet."

Indeed, ever since the Supreme Court in 1978 ruled that colleges and universities could consider race as one factor in admissions policies, states have been struggling with how to do so. Many states have voted to ban affirmative-action admission policies altogether, while others have attacked them in court.

And with federal appeals courts coming down on either side, states such as Texas have tried to find alternative ways to bolster diversity. Many contend such plans are having limited impact - or aren't working at all.

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