To move or not to move - need advice

My son was auto admit to the University of Texas. As discussed, entrance to majors is not guaranteed. He applied CompSci, which is very competitive, and got Turing Scholars honors. I had lots and lots of friends whose children applied engineering to UT, many of them not in the top 7% (8% this year), who were successful. It is holistic. There are lots of horror stories about kids who “should” have gotten in, but my anecdotal observation is that a strong overall student with leadership ECs does stand a good chance. There is absolutely no guarantee though, and you should understand that going in.

Texas A&M is switching this year to a holistic review for engineering only. For A&M, you should strive to meet the auto admit stats (they do not take that many out of their auto admit pool), but you can be in the top 25% and still meet the SAT requirements. University of Houston (which is okay, better in Mech E and Electrical) wants to see a score of 600 on the math SAT. Texas Tech is a good option, as is UT-Dallas and even UTEP.

Finally, the state schools do not meet full need, so we found that on average for a strong student with merit potential, a school like Colorado School of Mines ends up being fairly comparable financially. Other students I know are doing engineering at OSU or other neighboring state schools.

Oh and about Katy, it’s former prairie, so it has a certain (very flat) look to it. Everyone says schools are good. I can comment more on HISD and SBISD and somewhat on FBISD.