My chances getting in UT Austin or UMD? How to increase them?

nomatter
Sun, 07 Jul 2019 01:18:34 +0000

Realistically, as an out of state applicant your chances aren’t good for UT, right off the bat. UT is state public university. The vast majority of the accepted body of students are going to be Texas residents. But, it’s not entirely impossible, just highly improbable. The true admission rate for UT, out of state, is below 10%, IIRC. Are you, by chance a recruited athlete? If not, UT is going to be a high reach.

UT doesn’t care about “demonstrated interest” as an admissions qualification. UT places high value on rank, rigor, test scores, essays, GPA, extracurriculars, community engagement, talents, etc… So, you don’t need to worry about showing them that you’re interested. You need to show them that you’re academically qualified, that you’re engaged in your school, in your community, and if you have some extraordinary talents, that would certainly help. In your favor, UT does care about diversity. What may not be in your favor, is that you don’t mention test scores, or rigor, and you only mention a weighted GPA of 3.8.

No one in these forums can tell you if you have a legitimate shot at admission to UT, especially from out of state. UT is a very tall order for in state applicants who didn’t attain “Top 6%” of their class, but are otherwise highly qualified. But, you’d stand a better chance of getting some sort of anecdotal assessment if you provided more information about your academics, extracurriculars, and community engagement. For example, you need to qualify an “weighted gpa of 3.8” with the scale, and also provide your unweighted GPA along with the scale (e.g. unweighted 3.5/4.0, weighted 3.8/5.0, or whatever the scales are for your school). It’d be much more helpful to get anecdotal opinions if you’d include your class rank (e.g. 64/317). Standardized test scores are also necessary if you want people to opine about your chances for UT. What about your class rigor? Did you take honors, AP, IB, or dual enrollment classes in grades 9-11? Do you have AP scores, or SAT subject tests?

I’m not sure if “UMD” is Univ. of Mass - Dartmouth, or Univ. of Minn - Duluth. Either way, you’ll probably still need to provide more info on your academics, rigor, rank, and test scores if you want members to give “best guesses” based on their anecdotal experiences.