Do I need to submit a letter of recommendation to be accepted?
Letters of recommendation are optional and you will be considered for admission whether you submit letters of recommendation or not.
Note that some freshman honors programs do require a letter of recommendation to complete the honors application. Learn more about freshman honors programs here.
How do letters of recommendations work?
Letters of recommendation can help us to learn things about you that aren’t available from other application items. And if you do submit them, they will be considered when we review your application. But they are optional, and you will be considered for admission whether you submit letters of recommendation or not.
You may submit up to two letters of recommendation with your admissions application. They should come from someone who knows you well but is not a family member or relative.
In your letters or recommendation, we’re looking for information that expands upon or isn’t available in other items you submit, such as your admissions application, resume, or essays—such things as:
Your academic success and potential
Your leadership contributions to your school, family or community
Your persistence in response to challenging situations
Your interaction with students and peers from different cultural backgrounds
Your preparation for your selected first-choice major, both in school and out
Access to the housing portal happens once all of the required material is received and downloaded. It can take a bit for UT to download the transcript etc. Just keep checking back.
Now when my daufhter has gotten admitted to computer science programs at TT, UTD, TAMU and some others, I wonder if somebody can shed some light on her chances of getting into UT. I know that College of Natural Sciences very selective and Comp Sci is even more so.
Here’s the stats:
3.95 unweighted GPA
9 AP classes (AP Calc BC, IB CompSci HL, AP Phisics, AP Chem and more)
ACT 36
NMSF
Varsity athlete
Varsity debator, competes at state level tournaments
Bilingual
I also think her essays are quite good, above average at least.
Unfortunately, even though my daughter is a very strong wellrounded student (i know, this is not necessarily what top colleges are looking for these days) she is not in the top 6% not even top 10% of her class.
From what I hear, CS at UT is incredible. Besides seeking diversity, UT probably also prefers leadership experience on top of great academics. Maybe a female candidate helps a bit.
About 500-600 freshmen CS students enter UT Austin each year. I hear UT CS like USACO gold students. You need to have CS related EC. UT does not even consider USAMO as CS EC.
UT CS is competitive, from your student stat it depends on the IB CS HL score and the essay (how she plan to “change” the world) even though the essay A just describe the “past”.
I think anything in sciences is fairly competitive and everything about UT is competitive. I know Texas top 1% kids who are currently on pins and needles about getting a UT science major because you just don’t know who they’re competing with this year.
Does anyone know whether UT requires official transcript to be sent directly from high school, or it is enough to have official transcript uploaded on Common App by counselor? Thx!
My daughter’s UT application portal also says the transcript is not complete. It seems to me the high school has to send it directly- not via common app or scoir (which is what our school changed to this year).
It’s so annoying that schools aren’t uniform in their systems. It’s like we have to keep track of this weird blend of scoir, common app, and each colleges own portal. Makes my head spin.
I am a high school senior in Texas, and I am in the top 2% of my class. I applied to UT Austin for CS (with 2nd choice of ECE). I understand that CS is a very competitive major, and the acceptance rate is very low. However, I have a question about AP exams and UT credits.
a) Is the AP Lit credit useful provided that I have already scored a 5 in AP Lang in my Junior year?
b) Is the AP Chemistry credit useful provided that I have a 4 in AP Biology (for science credit)?
c) Are the AP Gov and/or AP Macro credits useful when your major is CS/ECE?
a: Yes, both the AP Lang and Lit credit can be used for core curriculum.
b: You could use the AP Chem credit for the other 3 science hours (you need 6 in core curriculum)
c) AP Gov is a partial core credit but you also need to take a UT test to utilize it completely. You can use AP macro for a core curriculum credit.