Opening a new thread for the next admissions cycle.
As the new application season is about to begin soon, my daughter has been working on her essays full speed. My understanding is that submission starts on August 1. I also know that UT does rolling admissions and the Priority deadline is November 1.
My question is:
Is it a good idea to hit submit at the very beginning of August or it doesn’t make much difference for the College of Natural Sciences?
Her stats:
In-state, NOT an Auto Admit, perfect ACT, most likely will become a NMSF this fall, 4 years debate, varsity athlete, 9APs (including CalcBC, Chemistry), CompSci IB HL, 2 DE classes. Interested in Chemistry and CS.
Also, is Common App any better/more convenient than Apply TX? I’ve heard it is easier to request LOR on Common App.
Applying early is great for you. Get it out of the way. But make sure you are ready. Your essay is tops, etc. don’t rush it.
Unless the school is rolling admissions (Pitt for example), it likely won’t matter as long as you achieve the deadline for the round you are applying too.
But for your stress it’s a home run !!
I’d get your list, see who is rolling, and do those schools first if possible.
Good luck at UT.
Ps. I’d do common app now that they have it for reasons you brought up. You’ll apply to more than one school and it’s just easier for LORs etc.
I don’t believe UT has rolling admissions. I’d look into that again.
You are right, my mistake! I just found out that UT does two rounds (priority and regular), which aren’t rolling. But the auto-admits can hear from the university in as soon as 2 weeks after applying.
My daughter is actually a c/o 2026 Geosciences admit, so one year ahead of people on this thread. We are finishing up all things related to admissions getting ready for freshman year to start. I’m seeing some “wish I had known” in my cohort, so coming on here to pass along…
#1: auto-admit only means auto-admit to the university, not the major. If you are auto-admit, you already know it, but you will get confirmation in a week or two. Decisions for majors come out at the same time that non-autos hear admission status: in the spring. Plenty of auto admits do not get their major or even second choice major, they get put into a general studies type of major instead. Transferring majors at UT isn’t easy or guaranteed, so be aware if you fall into that category. We didn’t get any notification when major acceptance was made, just had to check the portal. Fyi, those acceptances always seem to occur at the end of the business day. My daughter received her 2nd choice major.
#2: Plenty of people with perfect scores in everything didn’t get in or didn’t get their major.
#3: UT gives pretty much nothing for academic scholarships, because they have a plethora of high achieving students to attend. Don’t assume you will get a scholarship just because your kid was valedictorian,National Merit, 1600 SAT or anything else. There’s many people just like that attending, and what makes our kids outstanding in high school makes them average at UT.
#4: can’t say this enough… Apply early, and AS SOON AS you apply PAY THE housing fee!! It is only $50. We are now in dorm selection time for invoming freshmen, which is scheduled by date that the application fee is paid and occurs over about 3 weeks. If you are in the bottom half of that time period and looking to room on campus, dont expect to be able to room with your preferred roommate. So many people right now finding that they can not room with the person they were planning to because no open doubles are left. My daughter picked a room on day #2 and she and her roommate had their choice of rooms… people chosing now, 1.5 weeks later,
are posting “why did i even try to find a roommate?” because only a single bed in a double room remains to select from. (Most kids find a preferred roommate on their own through social media after acceptances take place)
UT does a good job in making these things publicly known, but it will be amazing how many people haven’t heard this before…
My son is Class of 2026 and was also accepted to UT in his first choice major (but chose another school). Just wanted to clarify one thing about applying for housing – make sure that you apply for housing even before you know if you are accepted. The application for housing opens right away after you apply, not after you are accepted. My son was on the housing list at UT in September 2021 already.
But note that due to auto-admit law, and UT being ultra competitive. there is some gray area in it.
Students who are auto-admit will be notified within 2 weeks automatically after official high school transcript confirm the status. Auto-admit does not admit student to major of choice. The review is in batches (hence not rolling). But of course exceptions (hence gray area) happens when students are extraordinary. Extraordinary students got accepted into majors earlier than regular review students. That’s why some showed their admissions to major way earlier than others in last few admission cycles (Sept-Oct).
Students in top 10 (not top 10%) of their high schools unfortunately nowadays are not considered “extraordinary”. Last admission cycle saw 781 valedictorians or salutatorians (close to 10% of freshmen) enrolled into UT (applied numbers are many more) With thousands of tip top students getting admission to majors early in short batches many people may mistaken UT do rolling batches.
Majority of auto-admit won’t know their major acceptance until January.
For review-admit, that’s definitely not rolling. Dragging till end of January is the norm.
I had a question on NM someone posted on the forum today. Christi mentioned NM Scholars may hear sooner like September. Do most NM Scholars get in especially with a high ACT score?
I assume you posted in wrong group since you mentioned Christi. For UT Austin, NM scholars have no impact on admission. School rank will determine admission to UT after verification via official high school transcript, then applicants will need to wait for engineering major admission.
So we had completely written off UT Austin since my son is not auto-admit and was going to apply to CS, but I just found out about the brand new major this year Statistics and Data Science. I discovered this in the Common App actually, and then I found an article about the new major. Anyone know if there are stats about how many freshman were admitted to that major this year and their stats? Are the chances of a review admit any better than CS?
I don’t want to get our hopes up. He’s actually taking an advanced class in Data Science this year. AP Statistics was a pre-req.
SAT was a 1410, 780 math. 4.4 W 3.8 UW GPA at (of course) an ultra competitive 6A school. I know SOOO many kids from his school are CAP’d every year.