<p>Hi, need your help and advice!
I will be relocating to Texas this summer from Massachusetts. While scouting the area, we brought our son (high school Junior) with us to look at Rice and UT-Austin. He fell in love with both colleges, and they are now #1 and #2 on his list. However, I am not sure we should move him to Texas for his Senior year. Tentative plan is to let him finish his high school in Massachusetts and let my husband stay behind to be with him. Right after hes done with high school, we will move to Texas permanently too. I will also be able to be spend a lot of time at MA even after the relocation, if I want to.
I want to maximize my sons chances to be accepted by Rice and UT-Austin. He might Early Decision Rice (as out-of-state? Or in-state?). And for UT-Austin, can he be considered in-state?
IF you are familiar with the Texan schools and their admission, please advise! We are willing to pay the higher tuition with Rice, but of course would like to pay in-state tuition with UT-Austin. If only I move to Texas for now, can my son still apply as in-state student?
Also, please share pros and cons of my sons moving to Texas (whole family will move together) or I move, he and my husband stay in MA to finish Senior year, from the college admission point of view. THANKS.</p>
<p>To which city in Texas are you moving?</p>
<p>Yes, this decision will depend a lot on where in Texas you are moving to; you need to check out the school district and specific high school that your son would be in, before making this decision.</p>
<p>I don’t know about Rice, but I know UT has very specific residency requirements to be considered an in-state student; you can Google their website and look those up. Also, you should know that, even for Texas residents, it is very difficult to get into UT. Well, it’s difficult to get into Rice too, but for a different reason: Rice you need to be an excellent student; with UT, it’s a numbers game because there are soooooo many applicants there.</p>
<p>If he really wants to go to UT or Rice, then I’d say get him down here and let him experience a summer or two in Texas! :)</p>
<p>It’s Houston.</p>
<p>Rice is a private school…it doesn’t care if you’re instate or OOS. The cost is the same and you dont’ get preference for being instate.</p>
<p>I am confident that if a parent lives in Texas for one year before the student starts college, that if the son is admitted to UT, he will qualify as a resident for purposes of in state tuition. This will work!</p>
<p>You can call and ask to confirm this. There are a group of people in charge of this.
- For general residency information or to leave a message for a call back, please call 512-475-7391.
- To speak with the residency officer, Deana Williams, please call 512-475-7408.
- You may also call Christina Schoch at 512-475-7407 for assistance with residency questions.</p>
<p>[Residency</a> Questions & Answers | Be a Longhorn](<a href=“http://bealonghorn.utexas.edu/residency/faq]Residency”>http://bealonghorn.utexas.edu/residency/faq)</p>
<p>Check the parent section on this FAQ list. I think that you will need to file your 2011 taxes from Texas and list your son as a dependent.</p>
<p>If your son were not a great student, you could game the system to get him into UT by moving him now and enrolling him at a low performing h.s. for his senior year. (If you graduate in the top 8% of your class AT A TEXAS HIGH SCHOOL, you can be admitted to any Texas public school you prefer.) I like your plan of senior year in Massachusetts. It is not too difficult to be admitted to UT (if you are not trying to get into the business school or the engineering school) and he can get in state tuition.</p>
<p>The University of Texas pages are very active on this forum. Come on over if you want to talk about University of Texas admissions and residency for the purpose of in state tuition.</p>
<p>Unless your son really wants to move for his senior year, I would let him stay behind and finish his senior year in Massachusetts. You are fortunate to have this option.</p>
<p>Move together as a family. A couple years ago, I stayed behind with kids for almost a year after H moved to another state. Not good for the family or our marriage. School issues can be worked out.</p>
<p>Isn’t the applicant transcript will be mostly based on up to junior year grades anyway, especially for ED? Unless the high school in Houston is just horrible for some reasons, it should not adversely effect the chance of getting into those schools too much if at all. Maybe the grade of the first semester at the new school will have some effect on the RD application.</p>
<p>You need to figure out exactly how this works for UT with top 8% automatic admit. I remembered talking to a kid here on CC and he had something like 3.8 gpa and off the chart SAT and he was not top 10% at his school and was not accepted to UT. But for Rice, what he has done so far will mostly be what he could present in his application, I believe.</p>
<p>You must check with the high school in Texas your son will be attending. To be counted in the top ten percent (that was the requirement when my son was accepted as in-state to UT Austin) at his high school, you had to have been there from the start of junior year. </p>
<p>As for Rice, if you are in need of merit money, Rice has a reputation of using merit money to attract out-of-state students and being very stingy with in-state students. </p>
<p>Most importantly, how does your son feel about moving the summer between Junior and Senior year? We were facing that and had decided not to move our son (in the end, we were able to all stay in Texas), we’re a military family and we’ve been apart before, it’s doable.</p>
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<p>I believe that the finer details will make this a lot easier to say than actually accomplish. The student ranking should be based on his ranking at the end of the junior year, and it is doubtful that a low-performing school would rearrange its ranking for a newly debarked OOS transfer. It is also good to know that most admission chips have fallen before Thanksgiving in Texas. The senior year is often quite irrelevant. </p>
<p>Imagine what the student who gets bumped out of the 8 or 9 percent range would do? If it were that easy, locals who have developed an uncanny expertise in gaming this rule would have not hesitated to organize a massive exodus from Texas’ suburban Shangri-Las to the Bubbaville and the southern border districts. After all this would have been even easier than pushing the gamesmanship envelope to the extreme by playing the AP and IB boondoggles. </p>
<p>By the way, this page indicates that the 8 percent that used to be 10 is now 9 percent. </p>
<p>[Automatic</a> Admission | Be a Longhorn](<a href=“http://bealonghorn.utexas.edu/freshmen/after-you-apply/automatic-admission]Automatic”>http://bealonghorn.utexas.edu/freshmen/after-you-apply/automatic-admission)</p>
<p>Some districts have a policy that you have to have two years at the graduating school in order to be ranked to prevent the kind of gaming mentioned above. I don’t know what they do if you move in senior year, but it’s something to ask about.</p>
<p>A lot of issues to address. Whether he wants to move and whether you want him to move, and how that affects you is of the most importance, in my opinion. The other issues are just not that important.</p>
<p>In terms of enhancing acceptance chances, you gotta look into that and talk to the admissions offices. For many selective schools like Rice, it can be to a student’s benefit to be applying out of area. Most such schools can fill their class with in state, in area kids, and they don’t want to do that. They want a diverse group in terms of geographics. That is the case of most every selective school I know with the exception of Duke where being from the Carolinas increases your chances of acceptance. For the class rank % issue, you gotta talk to the high school in mind for your son.</p>
<p>Good luck. We moved a high school mid career, and it was not a good situation. It was very tough on him.</p>
<p>Hi, MAma1888, I recently posted some information about eligibility for “automatic admission” to UT when a student moves to Texas for senior year:</p>
<p><a href=“Texas High School? - Applying to College - College Confidential Forums”>Texas High School? - Applying to College - College Confidential Forums;
<p>Although it’s possible the receiving Texas school district has a mechanism in place for putting your son in line for ranking = auto admit eligibility, I think it is more likely that he will be ineligible and thus have to apply for admission to UT via holistic review (the same way he’ll have to apply if he stays in MA). (And even if he’s ranked, you can’t be sure he will be top 9% depending on the Houston HS in question and credit / grade conversion given for his MA coursework. And then even if he’s top 9%, that doesn’t guarantee admission into certain competitive schools, e.g., business, engineering, communications, etc. There are a lot of caveats to the Texas rules!) </p>
<p>UT is transparent about the somewhat formulaic manner in which it reads holistically. See the latest “top ten percent” report here–it explains how Academic Index and Personal Achievement Index are approached in holistic admission.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.utexas.edu/student/admissions/research/HB588-Report13.pdf[/url]”>http://www.utexas.edu/student/admissions/research/HB588-Report13.pdf</a></p>
<p>Please have your son spend some time studying the entire UT Admission site, paying special attention to the special admission requirements of certain colleges, e.g., Business and Engineering, and the availability of numerous honors programs, together with their special application procedures.</p>
<p>[Be</a> a Longhorn | Information for Prospective Students | University of Texas at Austin](<a href=“http://bealonghorn.utexas.edu/]Be”>http://bealonghorn.utexas.edu/)</p>
<p>Rice does admit more Texans than any other group. In the end, I think that just makes it more competitive for the in-state crowd. </p>
<p>See [Rice</a> University | Undergraduate Admission: Future Owls](<a href=“http://www.futureowls.rice.edu/futureowls/Admission_Statistics.asp]Rice”>http://www.futureowls.rice.edu/futureowls/Admission_Statistics.asp)</p>
<p>I would love to see the 2011 OOS and in state percentages for Rice. I have a feeling that this year they admitted more OOS applicants. There were kids waitlisted this year who almost certainly would have been admitted in prior years.</p>
<p>My vote is to move the family as a whole. Keep in mind also, that there’s more to higher education in Texas than UT-Austin. I’d recommend further investigation of additional Texas public universities, like Texas A&M and Texas Tech, and UT-Richardson is reputedly throwing money at attractive applicants.</p>
<p>^ Just to clarify, the school IS located in the city of Richardson, but the name is UT-Dallas. You are correct, they are generous with merit offers!</p>
<p>We’ve had to move 5 of us to new regions 6x over the past 30 years, and due to H’s work know many hundreds of families with college-bound children who have to move for work, all over this country. You are to be commended to consider your son’s needs.</p>
<p>My thoughtful conclusion from this experience: if it involves a H.S. SENIOR, let him finish out wherever he is right now. He’ll write a better college application, finish out his school socially and educationally. </p>
<p>Younger than h.s. SENIOR, I can see why “moving as a family” is very wise. But the senior year is its own story, with a desire to finish up languages, academic sequences, harvest leadership opportunities in various Extra Curriculars. He’ll be involved writing his essay in autumn of senior year for Rice and UT, asking for teacher recommendations, and will feel less distracted by the physical and emotional upheaval of a family move. </p>
<p>Understand I’m completely family-oriented, and have given up some yummy career options just so we could always “move together as a family.” But senior year of h.s. is the exception to my rule. I say: Let him stay put. The parents can get through a year apart okay.</p>
<p>I believe this so much that when students who are college-bound h.s. seniors find their parents and younger sibs are moving away, and they want to stay put, I ask them to try to find a best friend or relative who’ll let them stay put alone in the familiar community! And I’ve seen that work. </p>
<p>Every kid I’ve ever talked to who was yanked as a senior into a strange h.s. said it was terrible; nobody was interested in them and vice-versa, and they resent their parents for doing that to them.</p>
<p>I love that thoughtful post Paying3tuitions. You would need some very good reasons to move a senior. As for admission to Rice, I have no inside scoop but as most private schools are looking for diversity I would expect that the Northern residence would provide a greater advantage than a Texas address. As for rankings my experience is similar to what has already been reported. In our HS students who are in the top 9% (or 10%) depending on which school they are applying to, especially if they are on barely within the percentage range are encouraged to get their Apply Texas applications in over the summer before the rankings are adjusted for new comer to the school. The point is your S will be ranked for his HS based on his OOS transcript. Course weighting is tricky and if your S is going to make the move you will want to try and find out how his courses will be weighted in comparison to classes offered at the new HS. As was stated above senior year really doesn’t count toward auto admission. As for gaming and students moving schools for the sake of rank. Depending on where you are it happens all of the time not in masses more like in trickles. Senior year really can provide opportunites that weren’t available to lower classmen. Moving could result in your S having to pass up some of the most valuable HS experiences that would be influencial in getting him admitted to a school like Rice.</p>
<p>Every kid I’ve ever talked to who was yanked as a senior into a strange h.s. said it was terrible; nobody was interested in them and vice-versa, and they resent their parents for doing that to them. >></p>
<p>It really depends on the kid. All three of mine moved during high school; my oldest was a senior when we moved cross country. It was not an issue at all for her. But we are military and the kids are used to coming into school as the new kid so it doesn’t really phase them. They are all outgoing and I tell people they can talk to a tree and get it to answer. We’ve known quite a few military kids that moved during high school and none of them have had bad things to say about it. </p>
<p>I do think it could be way different to move a kid who is not used to moving, but again, that will depend on the kid’s personality.</p>