<p>Thanks for the response. I still have a few more questions. </p>
<ol>
<li><p>For residency in TX, the UT Austin page([University</a> of Texas at Austin - Texas Residency FAQ](<a href=“Home - University of Texas Admissions”>Home - University of Texas Admissions)) says that you must " live in the state of Texas for 12 consecutive months and establish a domicile in Texas prior to enrollment… A domicile in Texas is presumed if, at least 12 months prior to the census date of the semester in which he or she is to enroll, at least one of the following applies: 1) the person owns real property in Texas, 2) the person owns a business in Texas, 3) the person is married to someone who has established a domicile in Texas, 4) the person has had gainful employment other than work-study and other such student employment in Texas." So, my question is, do I need to actually buy an apartment in Austin to claim in-state residency? What are the prices like? Can my parents still pay for this while counting me as an independent for tax purposes?</p></li>
<li><p>Can you elaborate more on the class size? That’s one thing that, erm, well, scares me a bit. I want to be able to easily interact with profs and not get a “Well, why don’t you talk to one of the TAs?” reply whenever I try to ask a question. I also don’t want to feel completely lost in my classes. I consider myself to be pretty independent, but I hate the thought of it being near-impossible to interact with a lecturer. Do profs have office hours? How small do the upper level classes get? Are we talking 300 students in a frosh class down to 40 in a sophomore advanced class?</p></li>
<li><p>Do the dorms have A/Cs and heat? This is probably a very dumb question(as temps are in the 80s now), but I just wanted to check.</p></li>
<li><p>Is the jobs dept of UT good at finding finance internships? Basically, what I’m (tentatively) interested in doing is majoring in CS and applying machine learning techniques to financial data. Will they be able to find me quant internships during the summer in NYC, or will I get a “You’re own your own” response?</p></li>
<li><p>How hard is it to maintain a good GPA during frosh year? Not to sound like a pessimist already, but I was thinking about trying to transfer to Columbia after frosh year(this is where I really wanted to go initially). My college applications looked like this: 3.1UW GPA(ouch!), 1410/2070 SATs(740M/670CR/660W), 710 math iic/640 chem, 5 on AP Calc AB/3 on AP Chem, but awesome ECs and awesome supplemental recs(showing my passion for CompSci and community service), so the main thing holding me back was my GPA. I looked into transferring and you pretty much need at a bare minimum a 3.7-3.9. Will this GPA be easy to attain or will it be as hard as an ivy to get with the huge frosh classes ruining the curve? Also, to transfer, I need a rec from a college professor. Will a good rec be hard to come by(with the huge classes) during my first semester at UT? I’ll definitely give UT a shot(its CS dept. looks great), but I just want to keep as many options as I can open now.</p></li>
<li><p>Going back to food(yeah, I really like food this much), what do most students do? Stay on campus to eat? Is the majority of food on campus fast food(or fried food)?</p></li>
<li><p>Do most students own cars? Are they generally needed for going off campus?</p></li>
</ol>