I am thinking about transferring to UT Austin to finish the rest of my undergraduate degree and perhaps participating in a Master’s degree afterwards. However, how do one get qualified for in-state tuition? I checked with University of North Texas and they require attaining a scholarship of 1,500USD to be eligible for in-state tuition. I have tried searching for information on UT Austin website and asking an advisor but so far I haven’t found any.
You can call the residency office and they will go over it with you. You cannot however qualify for at least 12 months after starting a program there. So unless your graduate program is multiple years or you have many years left of undergrad it may not make sense to do it. You also have to get into the graduate program so that’s another factor since there’s no guarantees there either.
You have to live off campus the first 12 month also from what I understand. The easiest way is to buy a property. Another way is to work for 20 hours a week for a year and there’s a third way related to owning a business. Then there are a lot of documents you need to provide. But bottom line the residency office is super helpful and if you can get it, it’s definitely worth it.
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From their website:
https://registrar.unt.edu/transcripts-and-records/residency-information
“A person who has enrolled in an institution of higher education prior to domiciling in the state for 12 months and who has been classified as a non-resident upon first enrollment in an institution of higher education is presumed to be a non-resident for the period during which he/she continues as a student.”
However, after residing in the state for 12 consecutive months, the student may apply for reclassification as a resident for tuition purposes provided unequivocal proof of establishment of domicile in Texas can be provided. Materials to the determination of the establishment of a domicile in Texas are: business or personal facts or actions unequivocally indicative of a fixed intention to reside permanently in the state (see “Documentation to Support Domicile and Residency.pdf” below). The student must complete a set of Core Residency Questions and provide supporting documentation. Any Core Residency Questions that are submitted without sufficient documentation is subject to denial. In-state reclassification is not granted on a retroactive basis.
In summary, it says that before you attend any TEXAS public university, you need to establish residency for 12 months.-live and work in Texas.
So, I don’t believe they REQUIRE you to get a scholarship first, to be eligible for resident tuition. Scholarships are competitive and limited.
I think the reverse is true: You are required to be a Texas resident in order to be eligible to apply for a scholarship? Are you a TEXAS resident?
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It used to be easier to get in-state tuition to UT. We did it for our son in 2011. It’s tougher now. But the residency people are very nice and will be helpful.
Any good reason why you are transferring? Is your current college affordable? If so,I would suggest finishing your undergrad degree where you are, or transferring where the costs are affordable.
Your question is about UT Austin, but your info quoted is about University of North Texas…which has different requirements for attaining that instate tuition cost…or at least used to. But that was fr incoming freshmen. @aunt_bea the students getting that $1500 scholarship and also the instate tuition reduction did not first have to move to the state.
You can apply to UT for your graduate degree. Maybe you will receive funding for that.
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It’s doable but requires significant Texas investment. Call the residency office.
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You DO NOT have to establish Texas residency by living there 12 months to get a non-resident out of state tuition waiver at UT-Austin. You just have to get a scholarship of a certain amount (changes by year and by department) and then apply for a non-resident waiver. However, it is very competitive. You need to check the site for the degree program you will be pursuing. For example, the UT-Austin College of Natural Sciences says on their site:
Out-of-State Tuition Waivers allow non-resident students to pay tuition at in-state rates. In order to be eligible for a waiver through CNS, students must be a recipient of a scholarship worth at least $1000 that has been administered and awarded by the University. Being a recipient of a scholarship does not guarantee a student of a waiver, it simply makes them eligible should they complete the proper waiver application and should the scholarship committee rank their application highly enough. We normally receive 60-70 waiver applications and usually only have between 5-7 waivers to award per year. It is a highly competitive award.
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It’s very hard to get these (as you can see from the language in what you posted) and very few students get them. No guarantees whatsoever. The easiest way to get residency, and it is still easy, is to actually become a resident.
@MaineLonghorn The UT residency office is fantastic and helpful and it is still really easy to get residency. We just did this for my daughter last year. The amount of tuition she is saving is unbelievable. About $30k last year and I believe it will be $33k this year. Of course, housing is so outrageous there that if she didn’t get residency, we would be paying nearly as much as my other kids outrageous schools. This gives a huge break. She also was just accepted into the iMPA program so she after she graduates in 2023 she has one more year to go and will get resident rates for that. Her savings from the 3 years of being a resident, wind up paying for her entire graduate school tuition plus housing. Can’t complain about that.
@Sinanjusin2021 We went the route of buying a condo. The problem now is that real estate in Austin is really expensive. Our condo is a studio unit and it’s value is like $265k yet we paid less than $200k for it. I definitely wouldn’t pay more than 200k for anything there for residency and risk being stuck with it, or unable to rent it out.
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That’s interesting. Does the condo have to be in the student’s name, and did she live there first year?
Yes, the student has to be the owner of the property. The title is one of the documents needed to be shown for residency, along with utility bills, driver’s license and tax return. They also have to be an independent for tax purposes and file their own tax returns. Fortunately we don’t provide more than 50% of her support so it was easy for her to file her own return.
I think they want you to live in the property, but hers was already rented out when it was bought and a lease was already executed for the following year as well.
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I think the 50% support requirement is an obstacle for a lot of families.
Yes for sure. Her condo throws off income that covers her monthly living expenses and her 529 with her as the beneficiary covers the tuition, room and board which as a resident, the tuition as you know, is shockingly low.
My friend’s daughter’s boyfriend was able to get it by working 20 hours a week, but you have to do it for 12 months and that’s hard to do when you’re in school full-time and in a challenging program. I don’t know if the same tax return rules apply in that case.
From what I heard from my seniors, seems like the process of getting approved for in-state tuition is pretty much alike in Texas except for some highly competitive institutions like UT Austin. At Angelo State University, if you get a 1,000 USD Excellence Scholarship upon admission you can apply for the in-state tuition. University of North Texas seems to have the same idea. In my situation, it would be transferring from a current Texas college to another and I have been staying in Texas for more than 12 months as well as in employment since last year’s November. As a result, I was kinda confused with information from different websites and advice from my seniors.
From what I understood, the reduction to instate status happened when incoming freshmen were offered those scholarships. I think you need to check very carefully to see if transfers are offered the same.
If you are currently in college in Texas, you will have difficulty with any school that requires residency be established before you enroll in college (I’m not referring to the scholarship based reduction, if that applies to you).
You need to check the colleges to which you plan to apply. Make NO assumptions based on anything other than what these colleges tell you about THEIR college.
Well, your daughter did more than just become a resident, she became a home owner. Any student can become a resident by getting a job or a driver’s license and registering to vote, but that’s not enough for instate tuition.
Very few college kids have enough for a down payment on a condo or house. Very few could qualify for a mortgage.
Obviously it’s the parents buying the property in the student’s name. It’s smart and saves a lot of money.
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You are saying this absolutely correct. It sounds like @Sinanjusin2021 is talking about schools offering in state tuition, which is completely different than those students actually being residents of the state of Texas. Once you’re a resident your automatically qualify for in state tuition. But many colleges will give you in state tuition as a perk by basically giving you a “scholarship” that reduces tuition down to the in state levels.
Bottom line if OP wants to transfer to UT as you said, he will need to become a legal resident of the state of Texas. If he isn’t one at the time he applies, then after attending UT for 12 months and meeting the required criteria for domicile in Texas he will become a resident.
If one can afford It, the easiest thing to do is to buy a property. It does not need to be in Austin. If one cannot then there are two other ways to become a resident. Otherwise having graduated from a Texas high school is yet a different way and something about family/parents living there and establishing residency but I think that still has to meet the 12 month bar.
Right. In our case she was gifted the money for the property. She qualified for a mortgage on her own surprisingly but we also could have had the mortgage with her on the title but we decided we wanted to keep it as simple as possible and not have any mortgage since we bought a relatively inexpensive property at the time. If she wasn’t going to go to graduate school there she could’ve sold it the minute she attained residency but we don’t want her to screw anything up for graduate school even though she’s already accepted and the ROI she earns is more than the money sitting in the bank earning interest so she may as well hold it. She may also sell it to someone we know in a few years for the same reason.
But correct. The school helps people with this and encourages them to do so. I wish my other two kids schools did. The savings are enabling me to pay for my other kids to go to their chosen schools. Not sure I could’ve swung this otherwise.
You cannot become a resident of the state of texas just by getting a drivers license, job and/or registering to vote. There are certain criteria you need to establish residency. Owning a home isn’t the only way to do so and there are cheaper alternatives but they are more complicated for some who don’t have the time to take to do them which is why those who are able to buy a property do so since that’s the easiest way to establish residency.
Of course you can. Hundreds of people do it every day. I could do it if I moved to Texas tomorrow. Now I wouldn’t be a resident for tuition purposes until I’d been there for a year but I would be for all kinds of other purposes like paying taxes, voting, getting a driver’s license.
I moved to California and was REQUIRED to get a driver’s license and register my car there within 30 days. I was a resident, voted there, had a library card. When I paid taxes that year, I was a resident from the day I started working there (earning there). I then moved to Florida and the same thing - my kids were registered in public school and we even qualified for ‘resident’ Disney tickets (so you know we really were residents). If they’d started college, they would have either had to have graduated from a Florida high school (which they did 3 years later) or have waited 12 months. I didn’t own a home in California or Florida but I was a resident.
Many military people move to Texas and become residents immediately and permanently for tax purposes.