From Essays to Major Selection: 13 considerations that matter (or not) in UT Admissions
Bali’s Mount Agung viewed at morning from twenty miles southwest
During the Spring of 2025, I wrote scripts and recorded forty videos for release on my YouTube channel @UTAdmissionsGuy. It’s the first time that I’ve published professional-level content. I will also publish text versions of many of those videos throughout the year. As always, all of my blogs and videos are written entirely by me and not AI or outsourced content writers.
In this post, I’ve updated content from a 2016 video to provide tips that clarify UT policies and will help maximize your admissions chances.
The easiest way to reach me is by email kevin@texadmissions.com and to complete this questionnaire for a free email admissions assessment and to discuss pricing and services.
1. Start your college applications and essays early but not too early
The biggest mistake that applicants make is procrastinating. Last-minute efforts never produce your best efforts. When I worked for UT, it shocked me that the number of otherwise highly qualified applicants who submitted sloppy essays, usually within a few days of the deadline, was so high.
One internal statistic that stood out when I worked at UT is that half of all applicants applied during the last two weeks in November. Don't make your senior year any more stressful than it needs to be. It’s uncertain whether and how applying for the October 15 early action deadline might help your chances, but waiting until the last minute will definitely cause more stress.
However, don’t start too early. High school sophomores and their parents occasionally ask for help writing their college essays two years in advance. I get the motivation of wanting to have a head start but starting once junior year AP exams conclude sometime in June is a good idea. Your goal should be to complete your essays and submit before senior year begins. The summer after junior year is the golden time to complete your applications because life only gets busier from September. Either way, sending in your app during the first week of August also doesn’t help your admissions chances and might hurt them if you submit a rushed effort.
2. Assemble a small college application army
It is hard to go about your college applications alone. Especially if you are applying to more than ten universities, it can be difficult to balance deadlines, essay prompts, and application logins. Work with one or two trusted people to help with your essays, like a teacher or current college student. Create a schedule and timeline to complete your applications. Parents can help juggle these responsibilities, but the application process must be student-centered. Although it helps to have people assist, be wary of having too many essay cooks in the kitchen. Asking many people for essay feedback often confuses more than clarifies.
3. Include personal experiences and concrete details in your essays
I dedicate many videos and posts to college essay advice, but the most important thing you can do in your essays is to make them personalized and specific to you. This sounds like odd advice since aren’t all college essays specific to the student? Honestly, no. Most college essays are vague, abstract, and generic. They aren’t very good. They could’ve been written by almost any applicant, and it’s unlikely their parents could pluck their child’s essay among a stack of ten others.
ChatGPT also doesn’t work very well for college essays. Since the AI doesn’t know you or your experiences, its outputs are only as good as the data you feed into it. Since most students write impersonal essays anyway, the outputs are equally impersonal. The AI also adds tons of unnecessary fluff and clichés that give the appearance of a high-quality essay, but that’s actually empty and not personal to the student. They can produce good enough essays, but never excellent or exceptional ones. I’ll have other posts and videos about ChatGPT and AI, but the conclusion is that the current versions don’t work well, even if you use a lot of prompt engineering and inputs that are specific to you.
4. Visiting UT’s campus or attending an information session doesn’t help
This advice might be counterintuitive for a post about maximizing your chances. I share it here because UT does not consider demonstrated interest. They might track student interaction for marketing purposes, but visiting campus doesn’t factor into the admissions process. Especially for out-of-state families, you do not need to go out of your way to visit Austin. I’ve saved many families money by cautioning against visiting because they mistakenly thought it would help their chances. Visit UT or Austin if you have family there, want to attend a football game, explore Austin, or learn about UT opportunities, but don’t go out of your way to visit because you think it’ll help your admissions chances. It won’t.
5. Establish a relationship with your high school counselor
Your high school counseling staff can be a great ally in your college search and application process. They may know of scholarships, summer programs, or lesser-known programs and universities that may be an excellent fit for you. Especially if you attend a large public high school, consider trying to get to know your assigned high school counselor. Even though they are busy, if you make an earnest effort to get to know or help them out, it may help limit the stress of your college search.
6. Choose a first-choice major you actually want
UT admits applicants based on their choice of college or school. They do not admit students to the university in general. On the one hand, some majors are extremely competitive like computer science, ECE, neuroscience, biomedical engineering, architecture, nursing and so on. However, since UT is trying to maximize its four-year graduation rates, and since major changes sometimes put students behind graduating, they make it very difficult to change to the most in-demand majors.
On the other hand, some students want to enroll at UT by any means necessary, so they apply to less competitive non-STEM majors like communications, liberal arts, education, and social work. Some STEM majors, like civil, architectural, and petroleum engineering, also aren’t especially competitive. The same goes for Geosciences. Playing this, applying to an easier major is a big gamble, though, because you might create more problems for yourself in the future.
7. Don't get lost in the details
Especially on Reddit and College Confidential, I see students drowning in the minutiae. They worry about marking down 45 versus 50 volunteer hours, whether to take AP Chemistry rather than honors, or minor errors they made on their essay and resume submissions. College admissions is about the big picture. Reviewers will likely spend no more than ten minutes reviewing your application. They are looking for an overall portrait of who to admit. By focusing on the details, you are guaranteeing yourself more stress.
8. Recommendation letters don’t make a difference for most applicants most of the time
Of the thousands of applicants I reviewed for UT, I can recall fewer than ten times where a recommendation letter persuaded me to nudge an applicant to a higher score. I argue in my book Surviving the College Admissions Madness that, in addition to interviews, rec letters are a giant waste of time. They require millions of human hours to request, write, submit, process, and review for very little benefit. They are almost always impersonal, generic, and lacking in detail. Increasingly, I imagine many references are written with ChatGPT, making them even less detailed than before.
UT added an additional complication in the Fall 2025 cycle by saying, “We want them to be from an outside source, but it’s totally okay to be from a teacher!” This led to families wasting even more time getting letters from a tutor, coach, or family friend that didn’t improve the chances of many students.
So, if you want to submit a recommendation letter, it’s better to have a single letter from a teacher who knows you well, with whom you’ve had multiple classes, or who might also be an EC sponsor or coach. It’s better to have one solid letter where you collaborate with your reference than four mediocre ones. More rec letters don’t mean more admissions points.
9. Don't overedit your essays and resist perfectionism and analysis paralysis tendencies
Students often hesitate and second-guess themselves before submitting. I sometimes receive frantic emails weeks later from students who I assumed had already completed their applications. The essays are polished and enjoyable after our third or fourth draft of detailed and intensive editing and feedback. There may be imperfections, but they are ready to submit. There is a sweet spot between not editing or rewriting at all and editing too much.
Occasionally, students overedit to the point that their finished essays look substantially worse than the previous drafts. Students edit out their voice or add new information that subtracts from the overall application.
Plan II Honors warns explicitly against this tendency on their site. They say, “Take your time, but beware over-editing . . . Although you want to write with care, you should not spend weeks or months rewriting essays. There is little to gain after the third draft. Don’t delay the submission of your application to write the fourth, or fifteenth, version of your essays. Overwritten and over-edited essays are never the best essays.”
10. Focus on what you can control
I dedicate a chapter to this approach in my book “Your Ticket to the Forty Acres."
Applicants, families, and even high school counselors focus on the wrong things. I hear about how challenging and competitive one’s school is, or disbelief at how college admissions is much more selective than a generation ago. People vent about state laws they can’t control. They wish the process could be different. College admissions isn’t fair or predictable, but neither is life.
Here are factors outside of an applicant’s control:
• The competitiveness of the other applicants in the pool
• State and federal laws
• The number of applicants for a given major
• The needs of the university
• How admissions committees measure and calculate the desirability of an applicant
• Essay topics
• The competitiveness of one’s high school
• Biographical factors like race or income
• How UT handles nonranking schools
• Preferences for in-state versus out-of-state applicants
• The mood of your reviewer
This is not an exhaustive list, but you get the idea. There are many things that you cannot change. Obsessing over things like the Top 10 percent Rule or how UT doesn’t consider the competitiveness of your school takes away from focusing on the factors one can control. I find people spend way more of their time discussing what they can’t change rather than what they have some power over. Complaining may be cathartic, but you will wear thin the patience of your admissions representatives and high school counselors.
Instead, focus on factors within your control:
• Your essays
• Your expanded resume
• Who writes your recommendation letters
• Your desired majors or universities
• Where you choose to apply
• How you spend your summers and weekends
• Your academic course selection
• Engaging with admissions professionals or attending recruitment events
• Seeking out resources in your school and community
• Your activities outside of class
• When you apply
• Your attitude, effort, and expectations
11. College admissions isn't life and death
At age seventeen or eighteen, undoubtedly receiving your college admissions decisions during the spring of your senior year will be the most important milestone of your life. Students often get so fixated on one school that they lose sight of the bigger picture.
What seems like the most important thing in the world right now may seem less so a few years in the future.
One of my favorite books on college admissions and the return on investment for a university education is Frank Bruni's "Where You Go Is Not Who You Will Be." He convincingly argues that how you approach college and why you choose your pursuits are more important than where you go.
Most importantly, don't let college admissions - an uncertain, unpredictable, and often unfair process - define who you are.
On the other hand, many students gain admission to their dream school only for it to become a nightmare, even at UT. A few times each year, I receive reports from former clients that UT isn’t working out. Especially for Ivy League and equivalent schools like Stanford or MIT, the hyper competitive environments can be very toxic. So, if you don’t get into UT, it isn’t the end of the world. It might not have worked out for you anyway.
12. Submit it and forget it
Once you submit your application, there is nothing to do but wait. You will stress yourself out going back and reading your essays and inevitably finding errors or areas of improvement. Sometimes, students ask what they can do to improve an already-submitted application. The answer? Nothing.
13. Be flexible
It is important to keep an open mind to the universities you are willing and excited to attend. It matters less where you go than what you do once you arrive. There are over four thousand universities in the United States, but unfortunately, the public gets fixated on the same forty or fifty that dominate rankings like US News and World Report.
Especially in Texas, it is the dream of tens of thousands of students to be Longhorns. The reality is the university can admit only about 18,000 students each year among more than 90,000 applicants, enrolling a class around 9,000
You cannot control your admissions outcomes, but you can control your attitude and outlook for the future.