What’s Wrong with UT-Austin Admissions? A Decade of Missteps
Traditional post town - Magome, Japan.
Rarely does a UT-Austin admissions cycle proceed smoothly. Even when I worked at UT in the 2010s, bizarre things would happen, and us frontline counselors would have no idea why. Senior staff didn’t explain anything to us.
Fall 2013 Waitlist oopsies and financial aid rugpulls
In the fall of 2013, UT denied need-based financial aid to its most needy applicants. That meant those admitted students from low-income environments could enroll only by taking out substantial Parent Plus loans.
Also in 2013, they put a few hundred applicants on a waitlist. It wasn’t like the recent waitlist, where you can opt in. It was only by invitation for applicants who presumably were on the borderline. They admitted some off the waitlist after May 1, only to retract the offers after some had mistakenly hit a button. They didn’t intend to admit anyone off the waitlist. Not even frontline counselors like me received an explanation from upper management as to why. That resulted in a few understandably pissed off families who physically came to our Dallas regional center asking for an explanation. UT eventually granted admission to those who they had mistakenly offered.
fall 2019: enter the appeals lottery
In fall 2019, UT admitted a record number of first-time freshmen applicants through the appeals process. Many admitted providing no new significant or compelling information. Frankly, I have no idea what happened with appeals this year other than to hypothesize that since UT didn’t build a waitlist, they used appeals to fill the final spaces in their class.
Appeals had everything to do with the needs of the university and very little to do with your request for reconsideration, except in cases of error. UT did the same in 2022, including throughout the summer, and in the past two cycles, they’ve allowed for multiple appeals for whatever reason. We will have to see if the new Waitlist brings some sensibility to this incredibly bizarre lottery.
covid-era bungles
Fall 2021 applicants during the first COVID year experienced an incredibly frustrating series of missteps. They released the main wave of rejections and CAP offers during the school day rather than in the evening, causing turmoil in thousands of Zoom classrooms. Rather than releasing a wait list, UT accepted more applicants than ever through the appeals process, while in the following year, hardly any appellants gained admission. They also randomly admitted previously rejected students over the summer without explanation.
In 2021, they canceled many international applications without explanation and were late releasing applications for transfers. In recent years, Business Honors and other honors programs released decisions well after February 1 and even March 1.
changing essay topics late
For Fall 2022, UT randomly added a new supplement topic in late July, the “change the world” supplement they required for three years. They also required every applicant to write a fourth supplement about special circumstances, even when only 5-10% of applicants need to share about something impacting their academic or extracurricular opportunities. They released that requirement in mid-August after a few thousand applicants had already submitted their applications.
releasing decisions during the school day
There were other admissions cycles when UT randomly distributed most or all of their decisions without public notice during school days, even not on Fridays, catching hundreds of schools and thousands of teachers and counselors off guard. In some cycles, like 2021 and 2022, UT reserved all of their rejection and CAP offers for a single release that came at the end of the cycle. That was especially cruel since those students had been holding out hope after their friends had gained admission.
For transfer applicants, some years they found out much earlier than the stated June 15 release date, and like last year, they didn’t find out until the end of June, while UT sneakily changed the language on their admissions page to remove the June 15 language even after that date had passed.
nobody can explain my ut-austin status glitches
Every year, there are also glitches on My Status or RIS or the Financial Aid pages that may or may not indicate if a student has or hasn’t gained admission. I hear and see these reports every year, including this one, and I still don’t know what to think about it. I saw someone on Reddit call it Portal Astrology, which is a perfect description.
honors admissions also cause issues
Honors admissions is always a mess since they are mostly separate processes from the regular application system reviewed by the Office of Admissions. Honors basically does their own thing, so between honors, regular admissions, and Forty Acres, there’s like fifteen admissions review and outcome distribution systems going on in parallel. These offices rarely communicate with one another, so that’s one reason why Engineering Honors releases decisions on one day, ECB another, and ECE Honors a week later.
I will never understand why UT admissions, the flagship institution of one of the largest and most prosperous states, can’t just predictably and reliably communicate to the public and release decisions in a sensible way. Their social media channels and mailing list broadcasts are completely useless in communicating information that the public needs to know. The objective of their social media presence is to build their brand and persuade high achieving students to enroll at UT over, say, the Ivy League.
I argue in my Surviving the College Admissions Madness that elite universities do not care about their applicants. They know they will make their numbers every year and receive more than enough applications to fill their spots. They are not incentivized to care, whereas small private schools or regional universities have to hustle to keep butts in the seats.
This is all to say the application and admissions process sucks. I’m sorry yall have to go through this.
If you want help navigating your UT-Austin and other college applications, emailing me at kevin@texadmissions.com is the easiest way to reach me.