Should I appeal?

I applied to the university of Texas for architecture and was sadly rejected. I wish to appeal the rejection but don’t know if I should. I know the weakest part of my application is my course work with only three aps throughout my entire highschool career but for good reason. My school doesn’t allow freshman or sophomores to take aps. Even when they are offered, they are often cancelled due to low enrollment. For example, this year, my senior year I registered to take 4 AP classes, the maximum you can take due to scheduling. However, only one of those actually became a class. Is this information good enough for an appeal? My other stats are a 4.0 unweighted gpa, 1420 sat, loads of extracurriculars such as music, honors societies, female empowerment groups.

Forgot to mention I’m rank one in my highschool class

@Riley Furey

First, I’m really sorry that you didn’t get the admission decision that you’d obviously worked hard for, and hoped for.

Second, if you’re #1 and you got an unfavorable admission decision (not just to major), then presumably you’re an out of state applicant…? If you’re OOS, the chance for admission was always very low. UT Austin is required, by State statute, to enroll mostly Texas students. That’s makes it painfully difficult to get into from out of state, and many, many valedictorians, and other very high performing students are rejected all the time.

OR, do you mean that you were an in-state Auto Admit, but rejected from your 1st choice major? The School of Architecture only accepts slightly more than 10% (admitting a total of about 120 students) of applicants, so competition is extremely tough. The School of Architecture does document alternative paths to the degree program here: https://soa.utexas.edu/apply/undergraduate-admissions

Either way, appeals don’t typically prevail. I’m not saying that to discourage you, just being realistic. An appeal will require NEW information that wasn’t considered with your initial application, and an explanation as to why it wasn’t included. When you applied (and requested your transcripts), your school sent a profile, and your counselor checked (or didn’t) a box to indicate whether or not you’d taken the most rigorous classes available to you. The school profile would have indicated what advanced classes were actually available. So, pointing that out wouldn’t be new information. They already had that information. From UT Austin’s portal:

“An applicant for admission should submit an appeal only if there is new, significant and/or compelling information that was not previously provided at the point of application; disagreement with an applicant’s admissions decision, alone, is not a valid reason for submitting an appeal.”

Nobody can tell you if you should or shouldn’t appeal. We don’t have nearly enough information to be able to advise you. I think you should look at the appeal requirements, do some research on the (typical) incoming freshman profile for both architectural & engineering (you have to meet the requirements for both) admits, then take that information to your school counselor to help advise you. You’ve got a little time, because the due date for appeals is March 15th.

https://admissions.utexas.edu/apply/decisions/appeals

It wasn’t your coursework. They had more competitive applicants than there were slots to fill. That’s just how it goes in a hyper-competitive university. You can appeal, but you’re pretty much wasting your time. If you’re out of state, you’d have a better chance of getting into Cornell. Texas reserves 90% of applicants for in-state residents.

@riley furry Sorry you were rejected. My daughter was also rejected by UT Austin. The odds of appeal do sound dismal for OOS especially. Architecture is definitely one of the hardest majors to be admitted to. Best of luck to you wherever you land for architecture!