Most discussion threads around UT are for Automatic Admits, so I’m thinking of creating something for us outside the top 6% and out-of-state students.
Thanks! How are you feeling? Have you applied to many other schools? We are in state but my daughter is top 11% in very competitive high school. She’s applied to 5 other schools (some out of state). The waiting is the worst. Good luck to you!
Great! UT is giving me a lot of anxiety lol, hope everything works out for your daughter.
Hi Yoda 13: I believe that Top 6% is flawed and it penalizes Top schools with small classes! My son goes to Top 5 High School in TX and it has a small size and admissions to the high school is tougher than getting in to UT Austin! So, Top 6% would be 3/4 kids. So, when they compare such a school to a school that has 600-1000 graduating seniors, it penalizes these kids who made to this school through a rigorous process! Wish they would look at the common tests such as SAT, SAT subject tests, AP Tests to compare high schools to make it fair rather take Top 6% from every school. Hope, they reduce the % based on the performance of the students from different districts etc. instead of blindly taking 6% from every school and every district!
The top 6% percent rule is a state law. UT Austin cannot independently adopt another admission methodology for automatic/guaranteed freshman admission. Under the statute all Texas high schools are considered equal (there are no “top” schools), and it requires percentile rankings to be treated as comparable.
The auto admit small class policy is an institutional one, not state regulated. This means UT admissions makes the rules, independent of the THECB. (Just to be clear, this applies only to small classes)
As a result of the small class lawsuit (in-state school w/grad class of 10 from 2017), UT created their own AA policy for small classes where it’s mathematically impossible for 6% to be eligible for AA.
The new UT institutional policy for AA of small classes states that the class valedictorian (Rank 1) will be eligible for AA.
kg2013 was talking about a class size of 50-67 students (“top 6% would be 3/4 kids”).
You’re correct, sorry. I missed the class size and read 3/4 of a kid 
My youngest son is a review applicant to McCombs, he was admitted last week as a review applicant to Mays School of Business at Texas A&M.
My eldest son was a review applicant for both UT/A&M for the class of 2020 and he was admitted to both. At UT he was able to get admission to the Liberal Arts Honors (LAH) program. He received notification of his admission to UT/A&M in November 2016. He applied to LAH because we attended an info session on campus for that program and we were told that if they accepted an applicant into that program, they would then communicate with the freshman admissions department to potentially expedite the processing of the applicant’s freshman app. As I understand it they do this because LAH has an earlier deadline then the general university admission’s deadline and before they can offer LAH to an applicant, they have to get clearance from the university that the applicant qualifies for admission to UT. Things worked out perfectly for my eldest son and he had his acceptances to both UT and A&M before Thanksgiving Break.
My youngest son who is currently a review applicant for McCombs did not apply for any honors programs. We already know he’s a reach for McCombs in the first place so we are resigning ourselves to having to wait until February to get a decision. Luckily, he already knows that he has A&M business school locked up so at this point UT would be an unexpected surprise. My wife and I are both Texas Exes and we have a preference for UT. I even tried to convince him to apply for less competitive major; however, he’s insistent on studying business and did not want to chance the internal transfer option at UT.
In any event, I know for fact that competitive review applicants have a shot at both schools based on our family’s experience. However, it seems to me that review applicants have to bring something to the table that makes their applications stand out during the holistic review process.
Good luck to everyone.
DD19 also not auto admit
Submitted Coalition 09/30/18
Transcript shows uploaded 10/15/18
then very quickly to under review status.
Will apply Plan II and LAH this month.
Understand your point! Sadly, it feels more political because Top 6% is NOT the same even among public schools. The difference between Public and Magnet/Charter school is miles apart with respect to the competition. In fact, there are students (in fact know 4 kids just in our neighborhood) every year who leave Top Charter school (DFW area) to join the public school during junior year! Charter is school is much smaller than the local public school and they went from Top 20% to Top 2% in the class! Ditto with some other charter/magnet schools - more and more parents are coming to the realization that it is foolish to send to top HS and getting penalized by UT system (or TX state to be correct!).
This is sad day since State of Texas should want the brightest students in TX to go to the best schools and stay in TX.
In fact, some of the Top Magnet schools and Charter schools are in TX - that is something TX should be proud. But if the brightest kids from these schools are going to penalized because of the Top 6%, the state of TX and UT system will be the losers!
Also, am wondering to your point, shouldn’t UT system make an appeal to the TX state legislature on how 6% irrespective of school district or magnet/charter does Not reward merit. Feel it is up to the UT system to ask the legislators to take a second look at this by providing numbers on how students are performing after they enter the UT system.
My daughter has nerves of steel because I’m going crazy with the wait. Lol UT is her 1st choice and she missed top 6% auto admit by 6 kids (top 7%) The total class size dropped by about 50 kids over the summer so it was disappointing to find out she missed it by that close!! She applied to Mccombs as her 1st choice major. She has been accepted into her other choice schools business programs. Just waiting on UT. It’s crazy how competitive it is. How is everyone else holding up?
TXlove - hope everything works out well and best wishes to your daughter!
When did you apply & did you also apply for UT BHP?
@kg2013 thank you!! She applied 9/30. Read somewhere that the average stats of accepted BHP students were typically top 2% of class and had higher SAT/ACT scores than she did, so she didn’t think she had a shot and chose not to apply to BHP. Hoping that isn’t a delay of game for decisions as I seem to recall seeing somewhere that some honors students may hear back sooner. For now, we wait. Lol Very nervewracking!!!
I don’t mind the auto admits being the top % of student from each school. We are all paying taxes and the students around the state make the best of what is available to them, be it a small or large, rural or city, strong or so-so school program. he students end up be the best from their pond, often with very different experiences.
So far, we are 0 for 2 for auto admit, but DD#1 is going for it anyway. DD#2 might have a chance for auto admit in a few years.
@TQfromtheU I agree that its important that UT remains a viable option for admission for all Texans, regardless of socioeconomic status. Someone earlier argued that the top % law was inconsistent with merit; however, I disagree. Merit without context is meaningless and the fact remains that there are huge disparities in terms of resources available at the rich, suburban school districts my kids attended versus other school districts in this state.
My problem with the top% law is that it utilizes a sledgehammer to attack an issue that could be more delicately handled with a scalpel. I know people like the bright-line rule of the top % law; however, I think that the goal of admitting a representative freshman class could be more appropriately addressed through the holistic admission process rather than a state mandate.
The law has had some dastardly affects such necessitating the creation of the School of Undergraduate Studies and a clunky admission process that, by law, UT notifies auto admits that they have been admitted to the University while informing them that they must wait for a determination of their major. To my knowledge, there’s no other major university in the country that has a similar admission process. Also, at least until very recently, the law resulted in a decline in UT’s graduation rate which correspondingly caused the University’s overall ranking to fall as well. When I was an undergrad at UT, the school was routinely ranked by US News to be among the top 50 universities and soon after the passage of the law graduation rates plummeted and UT’s ranking also dropped them out of the top 50. Fortunately, in the intervening years UT created internal programs such as the University Leadership Award to identify those students who were at-risk of not graduating and creating a support system such as access to free tutorials which have drastically improved graduation rates in recent years. Those increased graduation rates resulted in UT once again reappearing in the top 50 in the latest US New rankings that came out this year.
Even so, I’d prefer a more traditional application process that permitted UT to holistically review and admit its entire class. That process would include taking into consideration the socioeconomic status of the applicants. Its untenable to me that the University should fill its entering class predominately with kids from rich, suburban school districts who have access to the best teachers, private SAT/ACT prep courses, and a variety of AP courses for students to select from. That’s inconsistent with the University fulfilling its mission to provide a first-class collegiate education to all Texans. I just think the top % law is clunky way to achieve that goal.
fatherof2boys - Thank you for your post!
Failing and dropping out of University is due to blindly applying 6% admit rate! It is up to UT Austin to go back to the TX legislature and ask the legislature to give them flexibility so that there are qualifications added to 6% of the class.
Let us say if the auto admit students from so-so high school/district whose students have not been able to cut it in top programs in UT system or even Texas A&M - the university should have the option of reducing the % till the district /school gets the act together! This is the reason - you have to compare Common tests (common base to compare students) to really see how good the students are in particular school or district. I see multiple posts of people with mid 1300s SAT with UWGPA 4.0 or 60-70th rank in a class of around 350 with GPA 4.0! There are tons of schools and school districts across this nation where grade inflation shenanigans are going on – and these students get overwhelmed in top college programs!
Also, as I mentioned before, it penalizes highly competitive schools that take in low number of students - there are some top Charter/Magnet schools in TX where there are only 60-150 students in the class. I know for a fact that top 25% in these schools are better than or equal to Top 2% of any regular school. Sad part, by denying students outside the Top 6% in these schools - TX is losing out! Also, the Top 10% in these top ranked high schools get admitted to Ivies, Stanford, Berkeley, U of M, Caltech - more prestigious schools than UT Austin and the rest of them cannot get in to UT Austin - even though they are better than Top 5% from regular high school!
@kg2013, I appreciate your passion for this topic; however, there are a few points I would make as follows:
(1) UT did not ask for the top % law in the first place, and as it currently stands the law is popular with the Texas legislature. The original intent behind the law was to provide a race-neutral process for UT & A&M to admit freshman classes that had socioeconomic and racial diversity. That obviously makes it popular to certain Democrats who represent majority-minority districts. However, the law is also very popular with Republican legislators who represent rural counties with public schools who traditionally do not have the academic rigor to compete with the rich suburban schools that, on the whole, graduate those high-stat students. The constituents in those rural counties love the fact that each year at least some of their graduating classes are guaranteed admission to UT or A&M.
(2) UT was able to get the legislature to make one change to the top % law when it capped the number of automatic admissions to 75%, that’s why for UT the requisite rank to get auto admit has risen originally from 10% to the current 6% cutoff, because UT wants to have flexibility to admit 25% of the class through traditional holistic admissions. I can tell you if there are kids who are getting into Ivy League schools, they are most certainly going to be highly competitive for review admission to UT. As indicated by my username on this forum, I am the father of two boys. My eldest son was a high school senior back in 2015-2016 and he was accepted into both UT and A&M as a review applicant. In fact, he was accepted into the Liberal Arts Honors program at UT. He eventually went out of state due to a full-ride scholarship offer at another state flagship. My youngest son is a review applicant in this current cycle and he has already been admitted to the Mays School of Business at Texas A&M and we are anxiously waiting on his UT app. Thus, so far my boys have been 3 for 3 acceptances as review applicants with the last one still pending under review. My boys are smart, but they are not Ivy League.
(3) UT actually publishes admission reports respecting things like the top% law and their own internal audit of their admissions process. In those reports, which I can forward to you if you send me a message on this system, you can see that UT identifies as its comparables the likes of colleges such as Ohio State, Michigan, Illinois and UCLA. That is, other public flagship schools. I’m the biggest UT fan as there is as I completed my undergrad and law degree on the 40 Acres, my wife is also a Texas Ex and so is her father, and my brother and sister-in-law. Having said that, UT is not Stanford, Caltech or an Ivy League school. CalTech’s 2017-2018 Common Data Set reveals that the school made freshman offers of admission to 568 applicants and eventually enrolled a class of 235. In comparison, UT’s 2017-2018 Common Data Set reveals that in that same cycle UT made offers of admission to 18,620 freshman applicants and a total of 8,381 freshman enrolled. In other words, CalTech admitted a fraction of the students UT did. That’s why UT does not see Caltech, Stanford, or the Ivies as peer institutions - they operate in a wholly different world when it comes to admissions.
@kg2013 I get that you are passionate about UT and the 6% rule. But your speculation that top 25% at charter/magnet schools is better or equal to the top 2% at a regular school is just that … speculation and unlikely to be true. It is no small feat to be top 2% at a large competitive suburban high school.