The Truth About UT-Austin Admissions: Holistic Review Demystified
Attending a traditional Balinese ceremony - opening of a new temple near our home
My wife and I live full-time in Bali, one of the only Hindu locations outside of South Asia. We’ve attended many ceremonies over the years, and we rarely have much of an idea what’s going on. Nor can the Balinese explain the rituals and stories to us when we ask. In the USA and the West, we have incomprehensible bureaucracies that feel mystifying for different reasons. UT-Austin and holistic review at elite universities is like a black box - applications go in, admissions decisions output, and nobody knows what happens in between.
I address UT’s holistic review from two different perspectives. The first is a straightforward presentation of how UT’s review process works. The second is a critical take on holistic review in general and why it produces such inconsistent and unpredictable admissions outcomes.
If you enjoy this post, you can dive even deeper into my lengthy Surviving the College Admissions Madness book chapter “Holistic Review is Bullshit.”
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.
How UT-Austin makes decisions
Since UT doesn’t admit students based only on their grades and test scores, how does it make decisions? It’s simple—sort of.
UT uses three factors to render decisions: your Academic and Personal Achievement scores and the same calculations for the other applicants competing for spaces in your desired college or school. Simply put, they want to admit students who excel inside and outside the classroom and are stronger than the average applicant. The Academic Index accounts for half of the admissions score, and it’s a formula based on your first-choice major, rank, and test score. The Personal Achievement Index is based on your overall desirability and fit for your first-choice major.
For each college and school, and for some most in-demand majors like computer science, UT places applicants on a grid. The X-axis accounts for the Academic Achievement Index (AI). The Y-axis accounts for the Personal Achievement Index (PAI) submitted by admissions reviewers. Students with an AI of 3.9 and a PAI of 5 are put into one cell, a 3.4 and a 4 in another, and so on. A zigzag line is drawn based on spaces available.
This chart is from a 2014 PDF - the last time UT published anything about its process.
UT’s Personal Achievement Index (PAI) - Holistic Review
PAI is the score you receive from the holistic review process. All applications are reviewed, regardless of the student’s academic performance. The PAI considers everything: the rigor of your courses, your essays, your resume, recommendation letters, and any circumstances relevant to your file. UT looks for students who are a good fit for their first-choice major. All students receive an evaluation of 1 to 6, depending on how much UT wants to admit that student. One is the lowest, and 6 is the highest. Most students receive a 3 or a 4. UT wants to enroll students who are leaders, involved in outside activities, and bring diverse perspectives to campus.
These are the specific criteria reviewers can consider, in no particular order:
Extracurricular activities
Quality of writing and essay submissions
Leadership experience
Jobs or internships
Volunteering and service
Awards and honors
Hobbies and interests
Languages spoken
Special circumstances like:
Socioeconomic status of family
Growing up in a rural area
Highest level of parental education
Single-parent family
Family responsibilities, like caring for younger siblings or sick parents
Attending a high school that sends few students to college
Illness or injury or overcoming hardship
Recent immigrant to America.
What UT-Austin reviews look for
Reviewers are looking for an overall portrait of a student and through the lens of your fit for your first choice major. They evaluate these qualities through the Apply Texas application, the essays, the expanded resume, and recommendation letters. Expanded resumes and recommendation letters are not required. You don’t receive any bonus points for submitting any nonrequired documents.
The only tool available to them is assigning a score from 1 to 6. Most holistic review processes employ a similar grading scale, though some, like Michigan, allow for pluses and minuses. Others break down their review into individual factors, like 1 to 5 for leadership, diversity, etc. Then they average the scores. It’s possible that UT has changed it’s scoring system, but as I argue in the second half of this video, whatever the scoring system is ultimately doesn’t matter because holistic review is so deeply and fundamentally flawed that it will never be consistent, predictable, or fair.
A few years ago, UT implemented a new system to bring consistency to its process rather than depending on a single review to assess an applicant. Some students may receive a second review score, and each score is averaged together, so it’s possible to obtain a 4.5 or 5.5, for example. If there is a two-point or more difference between each score, or a student is indeed on the border, an applicant may receive subsequent reviews.
Moving onto the second part of this post where I criticize holistic review.
UT-Austin and holistic review nationwide is never consistent, predictable, or fair
The biggest lie that admissions offices tell the public is that their holistic review process is consistent and fair. It isn’t.
In both rejection and acceptance letters, universities, including UT, will say something to the effect of “after a careful and thorough review of your application, we have admitted or denied you.”
Most applications are skimmed in less than ten minutes. As I mentioned, UT most likely assigns a single score to applicants. Perhaps applications are read by two or three humans.
But zooming out further, elite universities everywhere create elaborate scoring and review systems to evaluate candidates’ academics, leadership potential, creativity, adversity, and so on. They grade on one to five scales, offer a single score, assign plusses and minuses, soft or firm recommendations for admission. Putting numbers on something doesn’t make it science. I argue in my second book Surviving the College Admissions Madness that holistic review is bullshit.
College admissions is a human resources problem
How do you find the best fit among many qualified applicants for a few number of spaces?
Google, Goldman Sachs, and McKinsey still haven’t perfected their hiring and human resources. And they have nearly infinite amounts of data and metrics to assess who succeeds in their organizations. Google has experimented with a number of strategies including brain teasers, conducting a battery of twenty-five interviews, or having prospective employees submit responses to three-hundred questions. If Google can’t figure out how to hire well, nobody can, including college admissions.
NFL talent scouts routinely miss on undrafted free agents who eventually become stars, or their draft top picks never amount to anything. Even in the age of sophisticated LLMs that can vacuum up almost infinite data, institutions bend hundreds of millions of dollars to accurately select for talent, and they still can’t figure it out. Reliably selecting for talent is theoretically and practically impossible. There will always be talented people that processes miss, and there will be people who don’t work out who are selected.
Holistic review is inconsistent, imperfect, and prone to error and bias
It isn’t a very effective tool for universities to “find the right fit.” Universities give the impression that their review process is “rigorous” and take “substantial time” to get to know their applicants. That’s misleading.
Two fundamental issues with holistic review everywhere are calibration and consistency. When I scored applications for UT-Austin, all of us reviewers received an office-wide training. We read sample files. Each counselor voted on what they thought the essay score was on a scale of 1 to 6. There was almost never universal agreement. Some people scored the same essay as low as three with others awarding the highest score of six. The trainer had his own opinions that often disagreed with the audience. That means some reviewers tended to be strict and others more lenient. The review process can never be calibrated. You might get a strict reviewer and never know it.
Scoring is also inconsistent. Not all reviewers are admissions counselors. Universities hire outside readers and are paid $15-20 an hour. Most applications are read in eight to ten minutes. Reading 20 or 30 or more applications every day makes it difficult to maintain an even distribution of scores. Reviewers experience fatigue, especially since most applications look the same.
There is also bias and error. Reviewers tend to score more favorably the applicants who have similar interests or backgrounds to themselves. Your score might depend on the reviewer’s mood, how much sleep they’ve gotten, how strong the applications were just before yours, or whether they’ve been drinking a glass of wine. Even multiple rounds of review or review by committee doesn’t correct problems of consistency and calibration.
It’s bizarre that your mid-teenage years decide your life’s opportuinities
Most people don’t reach their peak at age sixteen or seventeen. Students who are undecided on their major are also penalized. Universities miss out on late bloomers or students who take less traditional paths, although UT-Austin does a much better job than other elite universities in admitting transfer and non-traditional students, except for the most in-demand programs like CS or ECE.
Holistic review creates a perverse set of incentives that exclude middle-class and poor students and distorts the values of wealthy families. College admissions corrupts high school environments and their students by pressuring them to pursue activities that don’t interest them, burning them out by taking too many AP classes, and taking away free time.
Admissions outcomes are more of a reflection of wealth and privilege than anything specific to the applicant. More students enroll in the Ivy League, Stanford, MIT, and other elite universities from the top 1% of society than the entire bottom half. 72% of students at elite colleges come from the top quarter economically and only 3% from the bottom quarter.
Although UT and other large public universities are more socioeconomically diverse than their elite private university counterparts, UT still overwhelmingly enrolls students from affluent suburbs and high-resource private schools. Low-income, rural, and urban students have much fewer opportunities to build their resume. Since many admissions reviewers are hourly freelancers who don’t visit schools, there’s no guarantee that a less privileged student will have their background and relative lack of opportunities taken into account.