The University of Texas at Austin is one of those rare public universities that is as well-known and respected outside of Texas as it is within the state. Over the past 10 years, the number of applicants has doubled, and that isn’t because the population of Texas has grown by two-fold. Instead, the majority of the growth comes from far away from Texas as students in places like New York and California rank UT Austin on par with top-tier private universities. As a result, the acceptance rate has shrunk. Today, the acceptance rate sits at a very misleading 26%, as that includes both in-state applicants and out-of-state applicants.
In 2026, getting into UT Austin as an in-state applicant is still fairly straight forward. As of 2026, the top 5% of students at Texas high schools are automatically accepted by UT Austin based on what is called the 90/10 rule. However, a 2009 law caps the percentage of UT enrollment through auto-admit at 75%, so if you aren’t in that top 5% you are fighting for a spot in the gap between the up to 75% auto-admitted and the 90% threshold of Texas-based students at UT Austin that the university maintains.
If you are out-of-state applicant, you have a different mountain to climb before you’ll even be ready to start writing your essays. While the number of in-state applicants rose 12% in 2025, the number of students applying for first-year admission from outside of Texas skyrocketed a wild 48%.
When we work with students passionate about the possibility attending the College of Liberal Arts at UT Austin, they often ask “Can I get in?” We quickly let them know that they are asking the wrong question. Instead of asking if they can get in, they need to be asking “What needs to be true for me to get in?”
By starting from a place of personal agency, you put yourself in the driver seat. Instead of focusing on the judgement of an anonymous admissions officer, you need to choose to focus on your actions, passions, and storytelling. In this post, we’re going to let you look behind the curtain at how we approach a UT Austin application including the must-do items if you want to stand out.
UT Austin has high standards. You can exceed them with the right strategy. Get yours.
Step 1: Top-Tier Grades and Scores
We’ll repeat this a dozen times in this post probably, but there are two things UT Austin needs to see in your application: academic excellence and focus. They aren’t a ‘feelings’ kind of university. What they care about most are the numbers.
The university expects straight A’s and beyond, so not simply a slate of A’s but all A’s in the hardest classes that you have access to. UT Austin didn’t include class rank data in their most recent Common Data Set, but it should be obvious that with so many out-of-state applicants and so few spots allocated for them the bar is extremely high. They want to know that you are excelling beyond the norm at your high school and that you’ll bring that same level of rigor with you to Austin.
When we start working with a student, one of the first things we do is ensure that they are on a trajectory to even be eligible for their top schools based on distribution requirements. Most private universities have recommended course distributions, but don’t require anything rigid. UT Austin, however, is very specific about what they need to see to even consider your application for admission.
Parallel to fulfilling these requirements, they want to see you doubling down in your subject of focus, too, by adding electives or courses through a local college that make clear that your prospective major is truly an area of particular interest for you.
In addition to your transcript and academic recommendations, UT Austin requires that you submit test scores for either the SAT or the ACT. They do not, however, release recent data on what makes for a strong score.
For UT Austin a strong score for an out-of-state applicant is in the very top of the very top. We like to see an ACT of 35 or 36, or an SAT of 1540 or above. The theme, you’ll note, is excellence.
Step 2: Pick an Academic Passion
UT Austin knows what they are looking for when reviewing applicants, and it isn’t the unexpected. They want to see a proven academic track record paired with a strong focus that makes your major blatantly obvious even before you write it down. The university doesn’t have heart strings for you to pull at. This can be frustrating, but it also makes our job obvious.
When we work with a student set on UT Austin, we know that the first thing we need to make sure of is that their academic passion is crystal clear on their application through how they spend their time outside of their required coursework. This could be through electives, outside study, internships, clubs, a summer job, the options are truly endless. Sorting through all those options and finding the best ones for you isn’t simple, so that’s where we come in. We relish the opportunity to shape a student’s activities section and transcript before they even start working on an application.
For the next step, it’s even more critical to have an outside perspective grounded in expertise in the university’s admissions priorities.
Step 3: Niche Down
Yes, developing a passion is a crucial piece of your application to UT Austin. However, even with the grades and the scores, and the passion, that isn’t enough. Alongside developing your passion, you need to identify a niche within your passion and really lean into it.
Again, this is a place where we support students in identifying, and thriving in, opportunities.
Let’s say that you love history. Great. That’s a passion, but what is the niche? Maybe we’d identifying where your greatest interest is geographically or based on a time period, and then find things that allow you to develop that niche into a strong narrative focus. We aren’t saying that you need to even prioritize this niche in college. Interests change and passions develop. However, for the purposes of the application having this level of focus is necessary and important.
Step 4: Develop Your Extracurriculars
As you are leaning into your passion and identifying your niche, you’ll obviously be doing things outside of class — including some we’ve already mentioned. For Step 4, though, we want to zoom out to look at the big picture. UT Austin likes an application with focus, so we spend time with our students actually trimming out things that broaden their narrative in ways other colleges might love but that UT Austin finds distracting. More so than at most other schools, you need to spend less time trying to check every type of activity below, and more on the three buckets we’ll outline after them.
Types of Activities
Research
Internships
Outside classes
Summer programs
Clubs at school
Sports
Jobs
Volunteer work
The Three Big Buckets
Teamwork
Leadership
Academic Exploration
Those three big buckets are what UT Austin really wants to see addressed in your activities section, so focus less on doing everything and more on making sure that your profile as an applicant shows impressive examples of teamwork, leadership, and academic exploration beyond the classroom. At TKG, we do this by finding things that aren’t accessible through a web search that set our students apart, from research roles in leading labs to research roles with prize-winning journalists.
Step 5: Apply!
A lot of people treat the application process like a sprint. Yes, we can do that, and we are very good at it. What we really love, though, is playing a long-game. Writing your application (and sending it in) is the last thing you get to in the application process, but it should be far from the first. There is so much (steps 1-4!) that has to happen before you can ever write an essay or send in a score if you want to get into a dream school, and that is what we are in the business of — getting into dream schools.
We’ve been talking a lot about focus in this post, and the evidence plays out. UT Austin don’t even really care if you care about them, but they do care that you care about what you do. Just look at the nonacademic factors they prioritize.
| Nonacademic Factors | Very Important | Important | Considered | Not Considered |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Interview | X | |||
| Extracurricular activities | X | |||
| Talent/ability | X | |||
| Character/personal qualities | X | |||
| First generation | X | |||
| Alumni/ae relation | X | |||
| Geographical residence | X | |||
| State residency | X | |||
| Religious affiliation/commitment | X | |||
| Volunteer work | X | |||
| Work experience | X | |||
| Level of applicant’s interest | X |
We’ve laid out the path, and have given you tips to carry you along in your UT Austin admissions journey. If you are really serious about this, though, get in touch. In the meantime, mull over the essays and short answers you’ll be working on for the 2026-2027 admissions cycle. They give you 40 lines, or about 250-300 words, to answer each.
Why are you interested in the major you indicated as your first-choice major?
Think of all the activities — both in and outside of school — that you have been involved with during high school. Which one are you most proud of and why? (Guidance for students: This can include an extracurricular activity, a club/organization, volunteer activity, work or a family responsibility.)
Optional Prompt
Please share background on events or special circumstances that you feel may have impacted your high school academic performance.
Conclusion
Getting into a top school is an uphill battle, and at times its normal to feel frustrated or even a sense of defeat. The thing is, it’s actually very doable if you just chip away at the challenge one task at a time.
Applying to college is always hard work, but we make college admissions simple. Some even say it’s fun. Wild, we know, but it doesn’t have to be a stressful to get an exceptional outcome.
If you want to craft the perfect application for the University of Texas at Austin, reach out to us today.