What are your thoughts and experience on participating in CAP?

My daughters got CAP’d last night, and now we have a new option to research and consider. The requirements do not seem too difficult, so my primary concern is the fact that only about a third of CAP students complete the requirements and transfer to UT-Austin. Is this because many participants want to pursue non-COLA majors and are often rejected by the non-COLA colleges after completing the requirements? Also, I understand that completion of the requirements guarantees admission into COLA, but does that equate to admission into specific COLA majors (e.g. Psychology)? As both my daughters want to major in Psychology, CAP seems like a decent option, but we obviously want to do our due diligence. Thanks in advance!

Reposting from the Capped wow thread because, like you, I have similar but different concerns for CAP. My daughter “could” choose another major within COLA because she was trying for Mccombs 1st and Moody 2nd BUT she will be pre-law so theoretically, she could major in Political Science, Philosophy, Economics etc under COLA. All are great undergraduate programs for Law.

However, she will have 21 credits from AP scores, possibly 24 (depending on the school and how they view an extra AP history) by the time she graduates in June. From what I’m reading, the classes available for CAP wouldn’t make sense for someone like her. I can’t see how she could come up with 30 hours and paying for a class she will already have tested out for with a 5 on the AP. I think she would be better served elsewhere and try to transfer in after Fall 2019. Any insight would be helpful.

So basically, any credits awarded from AP are not considered under the CAP program?

AP Credits do not have to be claimed for credit, as do Dual Credit classes. The issue with CAP is that if you want to claim all of your AP credits for the core curriculum (communication, Physical and Life Sciences, History, Govt, etc) then you won’t have much available to take at your CAP school.

Many competitive universities and majors do not want a student to accept AP credit for some classes or if they are claimed, additional courses will be required for the major, as competitive majors want certain classes taken on campus. AP classes and Dual Credit classes are not near as in depth or broad as a class at a very academically competitive university.

If you do want to pursue the CAP offer, know that the system schools don’t have unlimited spaces for CAP students and those spots can fill up.

CAP only guarantees into the college of liberal arts. https://admissions.utexas.edu/enroll/cap/prospective-students. Also check out the quick links. More good info and FAQs

Thank you Thelma2, your posts are always very informative. Are you saying that “if” my daughter doesn’t decide to do CAP and attends another school for a semester or 2 and then reapply for transfer to UT that she may be better served by waiting to claim the AP credit at UT instead of the school she will attend first?? My DD will have AP credit for basics, like English, BIO, History, etc. I can’t imagine her “retaking” those types of classes, but would want to know if that affects her to claim them… I’m not knowledgable about the AP area and how it affects a major plan, so any additional insight is appreciated.

@TXlove my LHS had many AP class credits before entering UT. Since his major was ECON, he was told/advised, not to use his ECON AP credits. UT wants classes in the students Major to be taken on campus.

As my DD weighs CAP, and wants to Major in PSYCH (a COLA major), she will not use her AP credit in this subject. Furthermore, to insure that she achieves the CAP GPA requirements, it would be best for her to take more of the basic classes. We haven’t studied the available courses for the 1st year of CAP, but if someone takes AP credit for History, Gov’t, Math/Calculus, etc, I’m not sure there’s much left to take. I think Thelma is right on, as usual.

The issue with AP credit hours and CAP is primarily one of volume. If one’s credit hour volume is less than 18-21, it’s not much of a problem doing CAP, I think. If one’s volume is 30+ hours, then it is. It also depends somewhat on college major and AP prep towards that major. For example, my daughters will probably end up with 15-21 AP credit hours in history, lang/lit, gov, econ, psych, and calc. Furthermore, they plan to follow a pre-med track in college. Therefore, if they were to participate in CAP (which they have pretty much decided not to), they would probably take something like 2-semester sequences of biology, chemistry, and a foreign language and a semester each of gov, calc, psychology, and anthropology?/sociology?/classical civilizations?.

And some of those classes may not even be available to CAP students at UTSA, UT Tyler etc

DD accepted the UT CAP at UTSA this evening. Hook’em RoadRunners. Still the best option available at this time versus all the usual tri state, Big schools.

DD took her UTSA CAP offer just before it filled tonight. She clicked on it and the screen froze and we couldn’t log back in and we thought it was gone. But when we were able to log back in later it showed that it had registered properly. Very nerve wracking. We know people who were not able to get it in time.