I have a Few Questions about UT at Austin..

lealdragon
Sun, 06 Jan 2008 00:17:46 +0000

Entase, UT is the largest university in the nation, and among the highest rated public universities. It is situated in Austin, Texas, a very progressive city. We live in San Antonio and go to Austin a lot. My son now attends UT and loves it. There is a LOT to do in Austin! Just do a search on Austin culture and you will find lots of info. There is much diversity in the city and at the college, so no matter what your interests, you should find groups of people you can fit in with. Football is huge there, but it is oh so much more than that. My son is not into sports at all and lots of UT students are not into sports; the college is NOT all about sports like some colleges are. There are plenty of other interests to pursue.

In answer to your specific questions:


All of the above
I believe UT excels in most areas. I know that when my son attended an engineering seminar last year, they gave him some stats about the engineering program and UT ranked #8 in one of the engineering areas and #13 in another, and #4 in another. I don’t remember the specifics but overall they were right up there with Rice. I know liberal arts is strong, as well as computer science. A field my son is interested in is Computational Linguistics, and they are one among very few universities even offering that at all. Business is strong. Those are the only ones I know about specifically; others on this forum probably know more about the specific majors. But I’ve heard they are strong in pretty much everything so you can’t really go wrong.
Oh wow, where do I begin? UT is known as a party school, but then, which school isn’t, really? My son’s best friend’s parents criticized my son’s choice of UT and said it was just a ‘party school’ but when their own son went to Rice, he told my son that after just the first weekend, he was exposed to every drug imaginable, as well as tons of alcohol. So based on that, I would surmise that partying is to be encountered no matter what school you go to (except maybe BYU!) So yeah partying is strong, but UT is huge enough that there are plenty of subcultures of students who aren’t into partying. As for nightlife, Austin is known for its famous 6th Street, which is a mecca for culture and music. Austin is also known as the ‘Live Music Capital of the World.’ It has wonderful shops, restaurants, artisans, hippies young and old, right alongside high-technology businesspeople. Just all sorts of diversity in Austin. Oh, and plenty of parks, nature trails, lots of biking and hiking, swimming, rivers…I LOVE AUSTIN! The books I recommended said one of the biggest challenges faced by students is that there is TOO much to do!
I admit I’m a bit biased but Austin is just such a cool place to live, and being that one of the country’s best universities is located there, it was an easy choice for my son. People have bumperstickers and t-shirts saying ‘Keep Austin weird’ and that about sums it up.


Here are a couple of books that provide more details about UT as well as other colleges (important details like what is the nightlife like, the amount of partying, etc. in addition to academic details):

Unofficial, Unbiased Guide to the 331 Most Interesting Colleges 2005 (Unofficial, Unbiased Insider’s Guide to the Most Interesting Colleges) (Paperback)
by Kaplan

Students’ Guide to Colleges: The Definitive Guide to America’s Top 100 SchoolsWritten by the Real Experts–the Students Who Attend Them BARGAIN PRICE
by Jordan Goldman (Author), Colleen Buyers (Author)

Also, I suggest you search this forum for ‘UT’ and ‘Texas’ and ‘Austin’ - you will find lots of threads containing lots more info.

Good luck!