The University of Texas at Austin: Inside the Numbers

The University of Texas at Austin reports an overall acceptance rate that has slid from about 32 percent to 27 percent over five years. For most applicants, that number describes a competition they will never enter. Texas law, not the admissions office, decides the largest share of the class, and it decides on a single measure: high school class rank. A student in the top 6 percent of a Texas high school was admitted automatically, before an essay was read or an activity was weighed.

That makes UT Austin one of the most misunderstood admissions cases in the country. The published rate blends three separate contests that have almost nothing to do with each other: automatic admission for top-ranked Texans, an individualized review for the Texans who fall below the cutoff, and a national scramble for the roughly one seat in ten that state law leaves open to everyone else. A strong out-of-state applicant and a top-6-percent Texan are not applying to the same university, and neither is applying to the same place as a Texan ranked in the top quarter who wants a spot in the business school.

This report covers five entering classes, Fall 2020 through Fall 2024, using UT Austin’s Common Data Set and IPEDS admissions figures, the university’s own class reports, and the state statutes that shape the outcome. It walks through the application surge and the falling rate, the machinery of automatic admission, the testing reversal, the demographics the Top 10 percent law produces, the far tougher competition for individual majors, and the cost picture that a new tuition-free expansion is reshaping. It closes with what the record suggests for applicants.

Application volume and selectivity

Applications rose from 57,241 for Fall 2020 to 72,885 for Fall 2024, a 27 percent increase, while the number of admitted students barely moved. UT admitted roughly 18,300 to 19,400 freshmen every year across the window, so the growing pool pushed the acceptance rate down and the class size up only modestly.

Source: University of Texas at Austin Common Data Set and IPEDS admissions data, Fall 2020 through Fall 2024. Admit rate = admits divided by applications. Yield = enrolled divided by admits.

Applications and overall admit rate, Fall 2020 to Fall 2024. Source: UT Austin Common Data Set and IPEDS.

Two things stand out. UT holds admits nearly flat by design, because the university plans to a fixed class size and the auto-admit rules do much of the sorting for it, so a rising applicant count converts directly into a lower rate. And the yield is unusually high for a large public, steady near 47 to 49 percent, because a large majority of the class is made up of Texans who were guaranteed a seat and intended to take it. The trend has since accelerated well beyond this window: UT reported about 90,690 first-year applications for Fall 2025 at a 22 percent admit rate, and roughly 100,000 for Fall 2026. The five-year record is the early part of a steepening climb.

How state law builds the class

The single most important fact about UT Austin admissions is that the state legislature, not the university, sets the shape of the class. Two Texas statutes do the work. The first requires that at least 90 percent of each entering first-year class be Texas residents, which leaves out-of-state and international applicants competing for only about 10 percent of the seats. The second is the automatic admission law, passed in 1997 as the Top 10 Percent Law and modified for UT Austin in 2009, which guarantees admission to Texans who graduate near the top of their high school class. Because so many top-ranked Texans choose UT, the university is allowed to cap automatic admits at 75 percent of its Texas seats and to set the qualifying rank each year. For all five classes in this report, the cutoff was the top 6 percent.

How Texas law structures a UT Austin first-year class. Source: Texas Education Code and UT Office of Admissions.

Put those rules together and the class builds itself in three tiers. Roughly two-thirds of every entering class, about 68 percent, is filled by Texas residents admitted automatically on class rank alone. Another 22 percent or so is filled by Texas residents below the rank cutoff, who go through a holistic review. The remaining 10 percent, shared by out-of-state and international applicants, is where the national admissions race actually happens. The individualized reading that most college advice focuses on, the essays, the activities, the recommendations, applies to well under a third of the class.

That structure explains the residency gap. An in-state applicant in the top 6 percent has effectively a guaranteed offer. An out-of-state applicant, by contrast, faces a rate estimated near 10 percent, because a small pool of non-resident seats draws applications from across the country. For the most recent cycle the university reported admitting roughly 2,300 of some 23,000 out-of-state applicants. Any non-Texan reading a 27 percent headline should mentally replace it with a number a third that size.

Testing: optional, then required again

UT Austin’s testing policy moved in the opposite direction from most of its peers. The university went test-optional for the pandemic classes, covering the Fall 2021 through Fall 2024 cycles, then reinstated its SAT and ACT requirement for Fall 2025. Every first-year applicant now must submit a score. Test results also feed the separate competition for majors, where they carry real weight.

Source: UT Austin Common Data Set, enrolled first-year score profile, Fall 2020 through Fall 2024. Figures describe students who submitted scores.

SAT 25th, 50th, and 75th percentiles of enrolled first-years, Fall 2020 to Fall 2024. Source: UT Austin Common Data Set.

The submitted middle 50 percent drifted upward across the window, from 1210 to 1470 on the SAT toward 1250 to 1510, and the median reached 1390 for Fall 2024. Those figures describe a self-selected group during the optional years and sit high. With scores required again, the reported profile will reflect the full class rather than only confident submitters, and the auto-admit share means class rank still outranks the test for most Texans. For applicants to the competitive majors, though, a score near or above the upper quartile is closer to a floor than a bonus.

Who enrolls: a mirror of Texas

UT Austin is one of the most demographically representative flagships in the country, and it got there through a race-neutral mechanism. Because automatic admission rewards top performers at every Texas high school, including the many that are heavily Hispanic or Black, the Top 10 percent law spreads offers across the state in a way a purely discretionary system historically did not. UT crossed 25 percent Hispanic undergraduate enrollment several years ago, passing the threshold that qualifies an institution for federal Hispanic-Serving Institution consideration, and recent entering classes have been more than a quarter Hispanic.

Across the undergraduate student body, the most recent federal figures put White enrollment near 31 percent, Hispanic near 26 percent, Asian near 22 percent, and Black near 5 percent, with Texas residents making up about 90 percent of undergraduates. Because the auto-admit engine runs on class rank rather than race, the 2023 Supreme Court decision that ended race-conscious admissions changed less at UT than at many private peers; the mechanism that produces most of its diversity was never race-based to begin with. Individualized review, which UT uses for the non-auto and non-resident seats, dropped its race-conscious elements after the ruling, but the structural driver of the class was untouched.

Where the competition really is

The hardest admissions decision at UT Austin usually comes after a student is already admitted to the university. UT admits to a specific major, and its strongest programs run their own tight competitions that ignore the auto-admit guarantee. A Texan in the top 2 percent is guaranteed a place on campus and can still be turned away from computer science, business, or engineering and routed to a second choice or an undeclared track.

McCombs School of Business first-year admission, Fall 2023 to Fall 2025. Source: UT Office of Admissions figures compiled by Tex Admissions.

The McCombs School of Business is the rare UT program that releases its own numbers, and they show how steep the internal climb has become. For Fall 2023, McCombs admitted 1,625 of 11,433 applicants, a 14 percent rate. For Fall 2024 it admitted 1,454 of 12,813, an 11 percent rate, with an average admitted rank near the top 4 percent and an average SAT around 1470. For Fall 2025 the school drew roughly 16,500 applications and admitted close to 1,000, a rate near 6 percent. Computer science, housed in the College of Natural Sciences and ranked among the top ten undergraduate programs in the country, is at least as competitive and expects demonstrated programming experience. The Cockrell School of Engineering admits by individual major as well.

The practical consequence is that the major, not the university, is the real target for ambitious applicants, and internal transfer later is difficult. Students describe moving from liberal arts or an undeclared track into McCombs, Cockrell, or the Moody College communication programs as a genuine fight, and after about 60 completed hours a major is effectively locked. Choosing a first-choice and second-choice major carefully matters more at UT than at almost any comparable school.

Cost and a tuition-free expansion

UT Austin’s price splits sharply by residency, and a recent policy change made the in-state side dramatically cheaper for middle-income families. In-state tuition and fees run about $11,687 for 2025-26, held nearly flat in recent years as the state resisted increases, while out-of-state tuition and fees run about $44,908. Food, housing, and other costs push the total well above tuition for both groups.

In-state and out-of-state tuition and fees, 2025-26. Source: UT Austin and U.S. News.

The larger story is on the aid side. Through the Texas Advance Commitment, UT covers full tuition and fees for Texas residents whose families fall under an income threshold that the UT System raised sharply in late 2024. Beginning in Fall 2025, families with adjusted gross incomes up to $100,000 pay no tuition or mandatory fees, up from the previous $65,000 line, and families up to $125,000 receive partial support. The expansion, funded through the system’s Promise Plus endowments, was projected to add roughly 3,000 newly eligible students. About 44 percent of first-year students receive need-based aid, the average net price for aided students is near $18,850, and the average net tuition for in-state undergraduates had already fallen to about $4,152 before the latest expansion. For a middle-income Texan, UT is now close to tuition-free; for an out-of-state family, the sticker approaches private-university levels with thin institutional aid.

Retention and graduation

UT’s completion numbers have climbed steadily and now rank among the best at any large public university. First-year retention reached 97.1 percent for the most recent reported class, and the four-year graduation rate rose to 75.7 percent, up from about 72 percent five years earlier and from just above 50 percent a decade ago. The six-year rate sits near 88 percent.

First-year retention and graduation rates, most recent reporting. Source: UT Austin.

Those gains are the result of a decade of student-success investment, and the university reports that they have been largest for Pell-eligible, first-generation, Black, and Hispanic students, narrowing gaps that used to be wide. Paired with the low in-state price, the outcome is a flagship that admits a large, representative class and moves most of it to a degree on time.

Beyond the numbers

Three threads outside the standard admissions table frame the five-year record. The first is the demand surge already visible in the application counts and accelerating fast, with the pool roughly doubling over a decade and the auto-admit cutoff tightening in response: the university announced that the automatic-admission threshold drops from the top 6 percent to the top 5 percent beginning with Fall 2026, the first change since 2019. Fewer Texans will clear the automatic bar, and more will be pushed into the reviewed pool.

The second is standing. In the 2026 U.S. News rankings, UT Austin placed No. 30 among national universities and No. 7 among public universities, with two dozen undergraduate programs ranked in the national top ten and several McCombs and Cockrell programs in the top five. That reputation, combined with a low in-state price and a booming home city, is what keeps applications rising faster than seats.

The third is the widening gap between getting into UT and getting into a UT program. As the overall rate falls toward the mid-teens in the newest cycles and the auto-admit threshold tightens, the distance between a general admission and a seat in computer science, business, or engineering grows. The headline rate understates the difficulty for the students who want those programs and overstates it for a top-ranked Texan who does not.

What the five-year record means for applicants

Three conclusions carry into strategy.

First, know which contest you are in. A Texan near the top of the class is admitted automatically and should focus entirely on the major, since the university itself is settled. A Texan below the rank cutoff enters a real individualized review for a limited pool of seats and should treat the application, essays and rigor included, as decisive. An out-of-state or international applicant faces a rate closer to 10 percent, set by the residency cap rather than by any weakness in the file, and should build a list that treats UT as a reach.

Second, apply to the major, not just the school. Business, computer science, and engineering run their own competitions far tougher than the university’s overall rate, with admitted profiles clustered near the top of the class and the upper end of the test range. First-choice and second-choice major selection deserves real thought, because internal transfer is hard and a major locks in early. Scores are required again, and for the competitive programs they should land at or above the enrolled upper quartile.

Third, run the aid numbers before assuming UT is expensive. For a Texas family under $100,000 in income, tuition and mandatory fees are now covered, and even above that line the in-state net price is among the lowest at any top-ranked university. For a non-resident, the sticker is high and institutional aid limited, so the net price calculator should come out early. The five-year record shows a flagship growing more sought-after every year while a state law keeps most of its doors open to Texans, a balance no purely discretionary university has to strike.