@socaldad2002
90% are in state
8% are OOS
2% are international
75% of the class is auto admit by law, leaving 15% for non-auto admit in state students.
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Yeah, my nephew wasn’t an auto-admit, but everyone thought he had a great chance because of his ECs and test scores. He didn’t get in, although he was offered CAP. He decided to go elsewhere.
If he’d gone to a less competitive high school, he probably would have been auto-admit.
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“75% of the class is auto admit by law, leaving 15% for non-auto admit in state students.”
So it’s very possible that if a kid goes to a very competitive TX HS but are not in the top 6% they would still have a decent chance to be accepted to UT-Ausitn as long as they were a strong student. I read here that parents are moving to different districts to go to a lesser HS, which I think is nuts. At the end of the day you are short-changing your student as they will not be getting the best preparation for college even if you do get into UT-Austin (higher drop out rates).
Texas has a large selection of excellent schools to choose from. I can’t see any rational reason to move to a bad school to increase your chances of getting into UT. That’s insane!
@socaldad2002 You are correct when you said that kids outside the top 6% have a shot at admission. The real problem is that there are not enough seats in that remaining 15% to accept all of the great stat kids who apply. I have one who graduated just outside the auto % that year, 33 ACT, and a fantastic list of leadership and awards, tons of service, Eagle Scout etc. He got capped. (Basically a rejection with a feeder school path to admission) He went elsewhere on a very nice scholarship to a fantastic school with no regrets. - like lots of other Texas kids do.
For the record, the friend who kept her kids at the not so great public, did not have to move. They stayed in their neighborhood. Most of their community goes private. They chose the local school instead and took advantage of what was offered. For them, it paid off.
^That’s what I just said about my nephew. Strong student, Eagle Scout, one of the top musicians in Texas, but he got capped.
@MaineLonghorn It’s hard to believe that these kids get passed up by UT. My DS was a highly decorated public speaker. At least our guidance counselor had set the expectation with us so, we knew rejection was a possibility. Still, I admit I was stunned at the time. It all worked out for the best, thankfully!
@PokeyJoe, I’m glad!
At my kids school, the class sizes are 600 to 700 students, so 35 to 40 kids have the auto admit. I personally know numerous kids that got into UT that were not top 7% but they were not applying to the most competitive majors but were biology, biochem, speech therapy, education and business. I also know several kids that were in the top 3% of the class that did not get accepted to their major with the majority being engineering. So, even if you are in that auto admit group, there is no guarantee that you will actually get your major.
Here in Austin - we have three school districts that treat classes very differently. UT knows this. AISD treats Pre-AP and AP classes and IB classes as the same weight. The reasoning this was given years ago (it was in an article in the paper) was that for many students - taking a Pre-AP class was the hardest they could accomplish so they wanted to give everyone an even footing for making the top 10%. Other districts will weight an AP and IB class heavier. Also each district is different with regard to prerequisites. So for example - for my daughters class it was a mandatory requirement you take Pre-AP chemistry prior to taking AP Chemistry. This ultimately means you might not graduate with as many AP classes as other students for college admissions. Each district also has different rules with regard to midterms and finals - many districts offer exemptions (if you have a 100 in a class you don’t need to take the midterm or final) but not all do this (our HS didn’t do this). So UT knows each of these school systems and how they work. This is one of the reasons why you can be in the top 3% of your class and still not get accepted in your major.
@bgbg4us We don’t have zero hour classes except for a sport/band. In general your first credit of PE is normal weight so if you do a sport the next year - you take it Pass/Fail so the 4.0 weight won’t count against you. There is no boost with classes over a summer. Is there a game to play? Yes but it’s subtle and depends on your school district and what your high school offers.
No, I do not believe that the difference in calculation of GPAs between school districts led to kids that I know not being accepted into their major. The kids I knew had high ACT/SAT scores, many AP classes with 5 scores, taking the hardest math classes, actually doing research at UT in HS and not being accepted.
My kids small private HS decided to change their calculations for gpa the year my S was going to be a senior. (Really stupid as it didn’t address the problem issues.) That was the year that UT blacklisted his year. Of course they would say not the reason but it happened and one can read between the lines. Usually about 20 or more would get accepted. His year 3 got in. The other parameters were similar to previous years except for the gpa calculation change.
Here’s a list from 2017 that shows how many kids from which Texas high schools went to UT (more may have been accepted but chose to go else where)
https://utexas.app.box.com/v/2017TexasFeeders-withPACE
Here are 10 schools with the most students attending UT I looked up their 2017 class size, some of these schools are huge!
Plano West 102 (class size 1,329)
Westwood 87 (class size 616)
Westlake 87 (class size 657)
Coppell 84 (class size 800)
Seven Lakes 74 (class size 840)
Memorial 68 (class size 662)
Highland Park 69 (class size 550)
LASA 66 (class size 260) Magnet School must test into for acceptance
Plano 66 (class size 1436)
Woodlands 64 (class size 1,057)
^ My D’s high school is also a feeder and not far behind these and is also a mega high school. It is very competitive at the top and getting more competitive each year as the city demographics shifts. If a student wants to be top 6%, they better have a plan starting in 7th grade when course selection begins for 8th grade. But to give the school district credit, this isn’t a big secret. The middle school guidance counselors encourage the students to come up with a 5 year plan at the end of 7th grade. If the student isn’t interested in UT, then by all means no need to play the game or plan that far ahead.
@itsgettingreal17 so glad your GC’s are up front about this! We came into high school from home schooling and were totally clueless about rank. In fact I was told that our high school was a “non ranking school” well officially it is EXCEPT for the top 10%! My kids didn’t really know about grades or GPA.
Thankfully the two that have now graduated ended up with good ranks even though they took more unweighted classes than their peers and thier younger brother has now been well educated about the ways of their public school. In the end all my kids were or will be auto admits to UT but none of them want to attend :-?
I was well aware of the ranking issue from early on due to my own research as well, thankfully. Amusingly, a lot of “well meaning” friends with older kids warned me that my D had little chance of being in the top 10% because it’s so competitive (she graduated top 1.5%). Some kids will be top 6 or 10 percent in any district and others will need a less competitive district to get there. Parents and students should honestly gauge their student’s abilities and then decide how to proceed. UT is a huge prize in our parts, and many top kids won’t look much further. UT is similar in culture to our hs and you can’t beat the UT name for the price.
Wow, I went to Westlake. My class, 1980, had about 220 kids in it. I can’t believe that only 87 of the 2017 class went to UT!! Yikes.
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you might find this article of intrest:
In addition to not getting into their first choice major I think more kids are following the $$ and the kids that don’t need to think about money are going to more elite schools, I know of three class of 2017 Westlake grads that turned down UT for Stanford.
I thought this was interesting too, the school had 16 kids get into Rice and only 7 attending!
https://v3.boardbook.org/Public/PublicItemDownload.aspx?ik=41291162
Too late to edit but I’ve been puzzled by the “291 admitted” number, it looks like she included the number of kids offer CAP in that. In reallity only 148 were actually admitted and 143 were offered CAP. I haven’t been able to find any figures on numbers admitted to first choice majors at UT.
@3scoutsmom, thanks for the article link! Interesting that they don’t rank anymore. When I was a junior, we petitioned the school board to start weighting GPA, and they agreed.
Back then, with my stats and being a female who wanted to study engineering, I probably could have made it into another top school, but I knew I was darned lucky to have UT in my backyard. $4 a credit hour for one of the best civil engineering programs in the country.
My nephew was offered CAP, but he wanted to study business and was afraid he wouldn’t make it into McCombs, so he went out of state.
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