We attended a Women in Eng event this past weekend and are extremely excited about the resources available. We also spoke with current students and received valuable info. If you haven’t attended a “You Belong Here” event I highly recommend it for the information given.
My daughter has decided on Jester. We spoke to girls that lived in Kingsolving and Jester and all of them seem very happy. My daughter is very social and she feels like Jester will be a better fit. We walked by Kingsolving which is closer to engineering but it didn’t appeal to her. The girls we spoke to did say Kingsolving has a very nice study area.
We are thrilled with the amount of tutoring that will be available and the support. We spoke with a sophomore student who stressed the importance of joining a FIG (first year interest group)She said she opted not to join one and had many regrets. They will have the option to join one during freshman orientation with their advisor. Once they join they will be placed in 2-3 classes together (math, chemistry etc) and they tend to become close friends and form one big study group.
For those wondering about financial aid, it is going to be released by the 16th. All scholarships based on merit have been given out. If someone who was offered a scholarship doesn’t attend, that aid will be offered to the next person in line. Once they are students, they will have the opportunity to apply for scholarships in Nov-Dec. All engineering students are sent a link to a common application and from there it is submitted to scholarships that apply to them through the engineering dept. This year they had 7.5 million in money to award!!!
About transferring, it is extremely difficult and you will need a 4.0. It depends on seats available and if there are only 5 spots they will take the highest GPA for 5 spots. Sometimes the GPA difference between who is able to transfer and who isn’t is only 0.1 My daughter, who was initially disappointed not having gotten her first major of Aerospace, is happier now once she learned more about Civil and attended their session. Seems like admissions knows what they are doing because she feels like Civil is a better fit.
This past weekend really was wonderful and reinforced my daughter’s decision to be a longhorn. There were over 12,000 applicants in engineering and they took 2,900 so congrats to all who got in! They kept saying if you got in, its because they really want you.
Question: If you (or your student) was admitted to an honors program, did you/they or will you/they apply for a living/learning community as well? Why or why not?
@nomatter Are LLC’s specific to certain honors programs? The only LLC my son was invited to apply to was that special six course honors program that they offer science and business majors that deals with the Great Books and Classics. He is not going to apply because he is planning on doing a double major and doesn’t want to be have to factor in another six required courses.
@Jennibc it’s possible that a couple may be, but I think most are based off of the selections that they make in the housing app. My son, when clicking his interests (can’t recall the name of the section), realized that certain interests brought up different LLCs (and their required apps in the next section). He went back and removed those interest options, because (like your student) he’s double-majoring, and didn’t want to factor in additional course requirements.
UT sent notification in the recent past that the decisions will be notified not latter than 9th March 2020 which is due today. Does anyone knows the time at which UT will notify the decisions? My daughter is International applicant and is awaiting the decision.
Hello everybody, I’m new here. My S was auto-admitted in UT Austin and Texas A&M and accepted in Computer Engineering.
We had the opportunity to visit TAMU last Friday and we had a good impression of the campus and the info received was very good as well. The next day, Friday the 7th, we were ready to attend to UT Explore and some portions of “You Belong Here”, but everything was canceled because of the COVID-19 situation in Austin. What a bummer because was the opportunity for my son to decide which one is the top 1 in his list.
However, we were informed in TAMU that in the first year all the students are in General Engineering and in the sophomore year they have automatic admission to their #1 major IF they have 3.5 GPA or higher.
I have the impression that UT put all the students in their #1 major in the freshman year. Is that right?
It means that you were not admitted, but you were a strong enough candidate that they’d reconsider and give you another look if space becomes available.
UT Austin is offering you a spot on the admissions waitlist. IF you decide to complete the waitlist interest form (accepting a spot on the waitlist), and IF space should become available at the university, and by major, UT will begin to offer the opened spots based on holistic review (not order in line) of the waitlisted candidates.
And, please don’t feel bad. International admission rates to UT Austin are incredibly low. The demand for UT Austin is at an all time high. The President of the University has said that they’ve received 57k applications this year - another record-breaking year.
@rjjjj33944 As I mentioned in the post above, UT can only admit so many students. It’s not a matter of ‘fairness’, (your admission file will have gone through a full holistic review) it’s a matter of availability for those offered to be waitlisted. By State statute, 90% of those students are going to be residents of the State of Texas. That leaves about 8% of the spots for domestic out-of-state students, and 2% for international. ← That comes with an incredibly low admission rate, even accounting for yield.
The good news is that if you were offered a spot on the waitlist, you’re a strong candidate. But, every great applicant isn’t going to get a favorable decision. And, it’s a state flagship, so it’s going to serve the Texas taxpayers first, and foremost.
Rambling post warning: Angsting here as a parent! In the grand scheme of life, this isn’t such an important issue. Daughter was admitted to UT as a vocal performance student a few weeks back, but we’ve done nothing (other than had secured her a spot at SRD private dorm). I had a college sorority reunion (I am a Texas alum) a few weekends ago and was filled with nostalgia and desperately wanted my girl to go to Texas. My oldest got in (non auto admit) to aerospace engineering a few years back but chose to go to Baylor because they gave her a ton of money and she was intimidated by the size. Daughter 2020 is having a slight crisis over whether she wants to stick with a performance major or go into music ed. She’s been accepted everywhere she’s applied but is still waiting on one final school from her end of February audition and scholarship offers from several schools. Needless to say, we have done nothing about orientation sign ups. I am less worried about that, though, due to her specific major. It’s not like a bunch of engineering students are going to be crashing her voice ensemble or music theory classes.
As the mom of an engineering student, I will add my own 2 cents into the mix. The dean of the engineering school at Baylor flat out told incoming students at orientation NOT to try to AP out of calculus. The AP test for math is fine if that’s the terminal math class you are taking. If UT engineering is anything like Baylor, the kids will end up taking Calculus 1-3 plus several Differential Equations classes on top of that. A good score on the AP test does not mean you’ve mastered all the concepts perfectly that a calculus class would test you on. Especially if GPA is a concern, I would start over at Calculus I. That is my personal two cents as a parental observer. It was nice for my oldest daughter to have an “easy” math class to begin her career. It’s been a bit downhill in the math department since then, to be honest! However, she is graduating this spring and already has a job, so—success! No need to jump into all sophomore level classes plus learn how to deal with college life and being away from home all in the first semester. (I have taught freshman level writing classes at three different colleges in the past and these kids must figure out all kinds of things from how to study to how to wash their clothes. Most end up being fine, but many are totally overwhelmed at first.)
@OrangeJacket That’s probably not bad advice on the AP Calculus. Years ago, I met a woman at the park whose son was in honors engineering at UT. He’d been a homeschooler and took his Calc 1 and 2 at Austin Community College. I was asking her if homeschooling adequately prepared him for engineering at UT. She replied that he was actually doing better than most of his fellow students in Calc 3 - was handily earning an A while many who had come in with AP tests were struggling.
My theory about AP is that’s it’s like drinking from a fire hose - especially if you have so many AP classes throughout the year. A student is able to retain stuff long enough and study like mad for the AP tests but then they forget a good chunk of it all after those exams. The way the brain work, you really have to dig deep and spend time with a subject to learn it. Because everything you learn in math is based on something you have learned earlier, if you don’t master it completely, it will be shaky as a student moves forward.
The AP situation is unfortunate because colleges reward taking APs so students feel they must take them to show ‘rigor’ but I bet when all is said and done, as far as retaining concepts that kind of ‘rigor’ might be counterproductive to actually learning the material.
As the parent of a Longhorn who graduated ChemE last May and another Longhorn in CS - whether you take AP credit is your personal decision and should be about your student. Did they struggle with AP classes or did they breeze through and nailed a 5 with little studying? Every parent should know their student.
Many exceptionally bright and brilliant students on campus take AP credit and have graduated with honors, high honors and highest honors. Taking the credit never held them back. So it’s really a personal decision.
Both of mine have taken all the AP credit they can and done great going into sophomore level math, science classes. They even took their old AP work to use for studying. What it really meant was they could add a Minor to their Major or just additional classes without any concern.
I came across many students in engineering who used their AP classes to lighten their load with less classes to study for.
For students taking the two calc classes (like engineering and certain other STEM students) with your AP Calc BC exam can get credit for the 1st class. In theory your AP Calc BC class will have already prepared you for about half of the next calc class. So you’ll be getting a nice review for the first several weeks.
@AndyTXCL Congrats on your son’s acceptance into UT Computer Engineering. Yes UT admissions for engineering is you apply directly for acceptance into your major. Meaning they thought your son earned his spot and you didn’t have to prove it.
I’m also a Computer Engineer. Your son should compare the curriculum at TAMU vs UT as they are very different and make sure you look at electives and what you can specialize in.
If your son as AP credit make sure you understand how this works at TAMU vs UT as it is very very different - starting at UT means he can also take the credit and perhaps reduce his load to concentrate on those really hard classes. Or you can just keep to the schedule. You have a fair amount of flexibility. It was my son’s deciding factor.
If you have any questions - feel free to ask. I’m a five year UT parent and plenty of opportunities to get all your questions answered.
Currently UT is looking at offering online classes after spring break because they can’t predict this virus. So lot’s going on right now.
