"UT-Austin deferred me. Now what? Am I cooked?"

Amboseli, Kenya

The University of Texas at Austin has released their initial wave of decisions and deferrals for Fall 2026 applicants around 5pm on January 15, 2026. Fall 2026 seems similar to the previous year Fall 2025. That was the first cycle that UT had a formal Early Action deadline of October 15. They deferred almost every applicant in the same way last year. Almost all admissions and CAP decisions went out around February 7, 2025. This year, Fall 2026, UT was a little more proactive with communication.

I estimated that approximately 75% of Fall 2025 applicants were deferred, or around 4,000-5,000 students. Some messaging is circulating online about a “counselor meeting” that coincidentally shared the same data, that around 75% of eventually-admitted students would be deferred. Consequently, if UT admits around 4,000-5,000 applicants on January 15, and there are around 100,000 total applicants, approximately 95% of applicants are deferred. This seems to be irrespective of whether they applied by the October 15 EA deadline or the December 1 regular admissions deadline. You can read about UT’s many missteps over the years here.

Something like three-quarters of my eventually-admitted Fall 2025 clients heard back in February, and not on January 15, including my very top-performing students. Many applicants who were invited to apply to the Forty Acres Scholars Program (FASP) were also deferred.

That means if you’re deferred, you’re not necessarily cooked.

Does applying Early Action make a difference? My hypothesis for Fall 2025 was no, and I’m inclined in Fall 2026 to believe applying Early Action doesn’t make a difference. There were December 1 RD applicants who were admitted on January 15.

UT-Austin’s many Honors Programs handle admissions review and decision release independently. They’re almost always after the Big Batch of decision releases. Some programs do not release their decisions until the end of February and sometimes even in early March.

I’ve excerpted notes at the bottom of this post. I cannot verify the accuracy of that information, but it generally checks out as being plausible.

What can I do if I got deferred?

Nothing. There is nothing “to do” but wait.

I would say “don’t freak out,” but the reality is, the few weeks in Limbo between deferrals and admissions offers isn’t fun. I wish UT didn’t do it like this. Almost no other university has a gigantic batch of deferrals before the normal admissions decision release.

UT’s admissions FAQ page explicitly reads in response to the question, “Can I submit additional information after receiving a deferral? No, after the admissions deadline, additional materials such as letters of recommendation, letters of continued interest, or other items submitted by you or on your behalf will not be reviewed.”

All that you can do is wait.

In Fall 2025, UT gave a few days’ notice that it intended to release almost all its decisions on the first Friday in February. If that happens again for Fall 2026, that means decisions might come out on February 6. Their official messaging is that decisions will go out “on or before February 15.”

Past cycles do not indicate future trends. “Inductive reasoning” isn’t especially helpful in college admissions.

Nobody knows why a given applicant heard back early or not. UT is likely behind on reviewing applications like it was last year. It could be the case that your admissions file is stuck in the inbox of a lazy admissions reviewer. When I worked at UT, something like one-quarter of all diligent admissions readers read three-quarters of the files. The other three-quarters of admissions reviewers were chronically behind in reading their files and often had their files re-assigned to the diligent reviewers.

I expect social media spaces will continue to be a dead-end speculative void and an engine for anxiety and misinformation. I suggest avoiding online communities for “information.” They’re mostly spaces where misery loves company. I get their appeal, but you and your parents are only making this process more stressful by refreshing and doomscrolling. See this post, “The truth about Reddit’s Applying to College.”

It makes me feel hopeless about the state of the world and algorithmic spaces when Redditors treat “Portal Astrology” as literal. This was 100% sarcasm and a joke a few years back. Y’all need to stop.

What if I eventually don’t gain UT admission?

It may be that UT’s admissions rate falls below 20% for the first time in history. The admissions rate was 70% when I enrolled in 2007, when UT received 27,000 applications. It wouldn’t surprise me if the out-of-state admissions rate was below 5%. That means almost everyone will get denied in this and in future admissions cycles.

If you were an automatically-admitted Texas resident who ranked in the top 5%, but you did not gain your first-choice major, you should reconsider enrolling at UT. STEM and Business majors are extremely difficult to transfer into after arriving on campus. For example, if you applied for UT Cockrell and didn’t gain admission, you should consider enrolling at an alternative program like Texas A&M. Still, you can read about UT’s “internal transfer process.”

Essentially, every Texas resident who does not gain admission to UT will receive the “Coordinated Admissions Program” (CAP). CAP is UT’s equivalent to a rejection for Texas residents. You can read if CAP is the right fit for you here.

Some of you may eventually decide to attempt an “External Transfer” to UT-Austin after enrolling at a community college or a four-year university following high school. I have many posts about this process, and this Transfer Guide is a good place to start.

If you receive CAP, or if you’re a non-resident applicant who is denied, you will have the option to join the Waitlist. Basically, nobody was admitted off the waitlist for Fall 2025, and more generally, waitlists at other universities almost never admit students. If you do gain admission, it almost always comes after May 1, and it often complicates your enrollment picture.

The Waitlist system has (thankfully) replaced the Appeals Lottery of earlier admissions cycles.

Speculation below about initial Fall 2026 data and deferrals

I cannot verify if the below is accurate or from an official source, but the numbers, reasoning, and trend checks out based on last year’s (Fall 2025) process.