Every Wednesday, the teachers and staff at Lanier High School wear college T-shirts and sweatshirts to work. Lanier is in Austin, Texas, so there’s a lot of burnt orange – for the University of Texas.“It just makes you wonder, ‘what if I went there?’” said Janet Aviles, a senior at Lanier.  “I could become one of them, too, like a role model.”Traditionally, Texas students who ranked in the top 10 percent of their high school class, by grades, were guaranteed admission to any public university in the state. The top 10 percent law was designed to increase access to the state’s top public universities.   Most of the kids at Lanier come from low-income families and speak English as a second language. Without the rule, said principal Ryan Hopkins, his students would be at a disadvantage competing with students from wealthier high schools.“I’m looking at about 20 kids which are guaranteed entrance into some of the most phenomenally funded research institutions in the world,” he said.But Janet Aviles won’t be one of them. In 2009, UT Austin was so overwhelmed with top 10 percent students, it was allowed to cap automatic admissions at 75 percent of the incoming class. That means for next school year, only students who made the top seven percent of their class were guaranteed admission. Janet just missed the cutoff, and when she applied for one of the few remaining slots, she didn’t get in.“It is very hard, if you’re not in that top seven percent,” Hopkins said. “Unless you have done extraordinary things and can present kind of a unique portfolio to the admissions office, it’s very hard to get in.”[[{"fid":"300395","view_mode":"default","fields":{"format":"default","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":"","field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":"","field_description[und][0][value]":"Ryan%20Hopkins%2C%20principal%20of%20Lanier%20High%20School%2C%20in%20his%20UT%20Austin%20burnt%20orange.","field_description[und][0][format]":"full_html","field_byline_text[und][0][...