Applied for CNS at UT Austin, environmental science as major
3.9 GPA/ 4.0
ACT: 31
Taken 4 APs (not many are offered at my school), made 4’s on each AP test
not top 10% / school does not rank
Plenty of extracurricular activities (leadership in clubs/ organizations, over 150 service hours, sports, worked part time ETC)
Applied by the priority deadline and did the Dean’s Scholars program (if that makes a difference)
background: In-state student, go to a relatively small competitive private school so top 10 only consists of approx 20 people
When you apply doesn’t really matter, the lack of rank may hurt you a bit since they use GPA, Rank, and SAT/ACT to screen for kids to look at first. But even if they don’t look at you first its okay, Deans really cares a lot about your resume but they look for research lab experience the most since they are looking for kids they can just throw into a lab and have them getting data out and having fun doing it. There aren’t any environmental science majors in my grade level but that isn’t anything to be concerned about since I was the only medical laboratory science major in all of Dean’s Scholars existence, although I showed up to orientation where they had me change since it wasn’t gonna be possible for me to finish the degree plan in 4 years and do the deans requirements. I wish I could tell you more but It really depends on the resume and reference letters to differentiate between all the different kids that have good grades. And then the amount they accept varies for my the class of 2021 they only admitted 44 deans scholars when it is usually 50 but they did admit an additional 6 into HSS to keep CNS honors at 150.