Getting into UT is only the first decision

UT accepted 22.2% of 2025 first-year applicants, while Texas applicants were at 35.9%. Major selection has its own review.

By Sulayman Bowles · 8 minute read

Research cutoff: 2026-10-30. Prices, budgets and results keep their own dates.

In this investigation

UT accepted 22.2% of first-year applicants for fall 2025. Texas applicants were at 35.9%; out-of-state U.S. applicants, 7.5%; international applicants, 7.9%. None of those figures tells you your chance at Computer Science, business or engineering.

A qualifying automatic-admission offer guarantees a university place, not the requested major. I’d judge a UT plan by the program you can enter and afford, rather than the name on an offer. The public figures are much better at counting university offers than first-choice-major decisions. UT review and decision process

A lower acceptance rate didn’t mean fewer freshmen

UT reported 31,022 applications, 14,583 offers and 7,275 enrollees in 2010. For 2025, the figures were 90,690, 20,154 and 9,900. Applications grew 192.3%; offers, 38.2%; enrollment, 36.1%. Demand grew much faster than places. Common Data Sets

The early totals included complete and incomplete applications in one UT System inquiry, while the CDS convention calls for complete actionable applications. The original figures stay unchanged in the data, with that comparability warning. UT’s 2026 announcement gives 98,841 applications and 9,487 new first-time freshmen, but no matching offer count. Dividing those two numbers wouldn’t give an acceptance rate. Inquiry attachments · 2026 announcement

Who applied explains almost half the latest drop

The headline fell 4.42 percentage points between 2024 and 2025, from 26.64% to 22.22%. Out-of-state U.S. applications grew from 23,015 to 35,268, increasing their share from 31.6% to 38.9%. That group had a much lower acceptance rate than Texans. 2024–25 CDS · 2025–26 CDS

A symmetric arithmetic decomposition assigns 2.02 points, or 45.7% of the decline, to the changing applicant mix. Lower rates within the geographic groups account for the other 2.40 points. With 2024’s applicant shares and 2025’s group rates, the overall rate would be 24.27%.

That calculation doesn’t explain why people applied. It also assumes comparable geographic coding: the 2024 table explicitly used physical address at application, while the 2025 table doesn’t repeat that explanation. Legal residency and an address category aren’t interchangeable.

Top 5% guarantees the university, subject to eligibility

UT’s published threshold is top 5% for eligible students entering in 2026, 2027 and 2028. Schooling, curriculum, timing and application requirements still apply. The threshold went from 10% in 2010 to 5% in 2026, but didn’t tighten every year: it loosened in 2012 and 2016. An announcement year can precede the entering cohort by two years. UT automatic-admission reports · TEA 2028 notice

The law forecasts how many rank-eligible offers will fill 75% of designated first-time Texas-resident capacity. It isn’t 75% of every application, offer or the entire freshman class. Whole percentile bands, expected yield and forecast error affect the eventual share. The nonresident rule likewise limits offers by expected enrollment capacity, not a fixed offer percentage. Education Code §51.803

More students entered outside the automatic band; their odds remain unknown

In the Texas-high-school reports, 989 enrollees were outside the top-10% band in 2010, compared with 2,941 outside the top-6% band in 2025. Their share rose from 15.1% to 33.4%. The changing band prevents treating those groups as identical. Even within the top-6% era, outside-band enrollment rose from 2,339 in 2019 to 2,941 in 2025; application counts are still needed for acceptance odds. UT reports

In 2025, the top-6% group received 12,771 offers and enrolled 5,856 students, a 45.9% yield. The other group received 4,074 offers and enrolled 2,941, a 72.2% yield. Different yields help explain why shares of offers and classmates differ. They don’t count first-choice-major denials.

The archived inquiry permits a narrower early comparison using complete applications and consistently coded Texas residents. Calculated nonautomatic rates were 14.7% in 2010, 22.2% in 2011, 23.7% in 2012 and 17.8% in 2013, with PACE excluded from the last numerator. For 2009–2013 pooled, removing incomplete files changes 15.79% to 18.62%. Texas-high-school graduates and legal Texas residents aren’t the same population, so subtracting modern automatic totals from CDS in-state totals would manufacture today’s missing rate. Inquiry attachments

Which program rates can you use?

McCombs’ matched 2025 flyer gives 1,546 offers from 16,512 applications: 9.36%, rounded to 9% on the admission page. Its fall 2025 magazine reports 19,452 applications, with no recovered definition reconciling that total. Keep the flyer’s offers attached to its own applications. Finance, Accounting, Marketing, Management and MIS begin through Unspecified Business, with honors reviewed in another selection.

Official program figures and their limits

Program	Public figure	How to read it
Aerospace Engineering	About 6%	An undated department estimate; the FAQ says it varies by year.
Computational Engineering	About 10%	An undated department estimate, with no matched annual counts.
School of Architecture	About 120 offers per 1,000 applicants, or 12%	School-wide and undated; architecture and interior design have their own first-choice entry requirements.
Plan II Honors	Roughly 370 offers per 2,500 complete applications, about 15%	An undated honors-major estimate, rather than the Liberal Arts college rate.
Computer Science	Current matched freshman rate unknown	A precise current rate wasn't verified in a public primary table.

The engineering department, Architecture school and Plan II supply the approximate figures. They pool student groups and aren't personal probabilities. Historical engineering publications also change labels and populations, preventing a smooth annual college series.

A similar-size McCombs class required fewer offers

Matched McCombs publications show 8,885 applications and 1,695 offers in 2020, against 16,512 and 1,546 in the 2025 flyer. Enrollment was 995 and 1,010. The ratio fell from 19.1% to 9.4% while yield rose from 58.7% to 65.3%. A different 2025 magazine gives conflicting counts, so its numbers aren’t mixed into that comparison. Earlier matched publications show 19.7% for 2012, 21.7% for 2013 and 25.4% for 2014/15; the history wasn’t a steady decline. A mirrored 2010 presentation gives 5,685 applications and 1,377 offers, 24.2%; its original hosted file wasn’t recovered. 2025 flyer

McCombs’ strategic plan says UT rejected a proposed undergraduate expansion in 2023 and the college reduced enrollment toward its roughly 950-student 2019 baseline for fall 2024. That documents how college capacity can move differently from the university. It doesn’t reveal the reason for the rejection or isolate its effect on acceptance. The 2026 School of Computing announcement also changes the organizational names; it doesn’t supply a new acceptance rate. McCombs plan · Computing announcement

Business applicants enter through Unspecified Business. Switching later is another competitive application. Statistics and Data Science says internal transfer is expected to start in fall 2027 and external transfer is unavailable. CAP starts at another UT System institution and guarantees qualifying transfer into Liberal Arts subject to major restrictions; it isn’t a direct first-year Austin offer. Architecture and Nursing aren’t available through CAP competitive transfer. Program rules · CAP

How many university offer-holders were denied their first choice? The public totals don’t answer it. Second-choice consideration is possible in UT’s current FAQ, not promised to every applicant. UT FAQ

A high school’s UT enrollment isn’t its acceptance rate

The state’s 2010–2024 files contain 21,880 school-year entries across 1,936 TEA school IDs. They count college enrollment, not applications or offers. Schools with 25 or fewer graduates are excluded; destinations below five students are pooled. A missing UT cell isn’t a verified zero. State high-school series

The share of graduates the state couldn’t link rose from 4.42% to 8.58%. At Plano West it rose from 4.59% to 26.57%; reported UT enrollment fell from 82 to 58 while untrackable graduates rose from 41 to 334. That prevents a confident conclusion that its UT pipeline shrank. Westwood’s untrackable share also rose, from 5.02% to 18.43%.

Westlake, Allen, Westwood, Plano West, Lake Travis and Vandegrift have some of the largest documented 2024 UT counts. School size, choices, preparation and missing matches prevent ranking them as the best admission odds. The top-20 and top-50 enrollment-share ranges overlap across many years and exclude untrackable students and small schools.

An existing guarantee helped when students received it early

A randomized study of 32 high-poverty, historically low-sending schools covered 547 low-income students near the top of their classes. Letters guaranteed existing tuition support, an $1,800 housing scholarship and campus housing placement; control letters encouraged application. Among automatic-eligible students, average school-level enrollment rose from 11% to 30%. The outside-automatic effect was smaller and statistically insignificant. Published study

The intervention combined earlier information, financial certainty and housing placement. It didn’t promise free housing or identify each ingredient’s individual effect. Earlier top-percent studies likewise distinguish application, offers and enrollment; findings from private Ivy-Plus colleges can’t explain UT without UT-specific support.

How we got this

The data download contains matched university tables, rank cutoffs, program sources, high-school joins and formulas through the October 30, 2026 cutoff. Rates always divide matching offers by applications; yield divides enrollment by offers. These are group results, not personal probabilities.

Two important conflicts remain: the 2025 automatic report’s regional table has shifted labels and is excluded, although its aggregate totals are corroborated elsewhere; the state’s 2025 application count is 77,639 versus the CDS’s 90,690. The state’s summer/fall, degree-seeking and legal-residence definitions don’t fully reconcile that gap. No missing count was filled with zero. Full literature comparisons and the source-by-source audit are in the manuscript download.