Thanks! Congratulations on Plan II and Cockrell, @ConcertoinD!
Andy Dufresne “give up”? Not after 19 years in Shawshank Prison!
But @TXDad56, you were actually spot on. Here’s the complete recap of February Plan II admits from last year’s thread (Class of 2019)
@pualum: Admitted 2/12/15; “about 1 week after getting into ‘1st’ choice”
@funtimes123: Admitted 2/13/15: “accepted to 1st choice earlier this week”
@InvisibleInc : Admitted 2/14/15: “Got into my major / the university about 1 week ago”
@bsb4389 : Admitted 2/17/15: “Recently accepted to Cockrell as well”
@collegefind: Admitted 2/26/15: “did not get admission to his major…until 2/18/15”
That’s all there were. And EVERY SINGLE ONE of them have one thing in common: their 1st choice major didn’t come through until the month of February.
When I went to the Plan II preview, the program director specifically commented that they don’t see the applications until the 1st choice major is done with them, so they specifically leave a few spots for those kids whose apps get hung up elsewhere. And that’s who still has a shot. Not anyone else. 
Look - I’d love to be proven wrong, and have to come back here and post a long “whoops” reply. But based on how things played out last year, I’d say I’m out of luck (as is anyone else who is waiting on Plan II, but has already been admitted to their other major.
@AndyDufresne Was your second choice major also under college of liberal arts?
@AndyDufresne When I read about the Honors Quad dorms, it states:
The Honors Living Community, comprised of four halls in the “Quad” (Andrews, Blanton, Carothers and Littlefield), houses approximately 500 students, most of whom are in one of the university’s undergraduate honors programs.
It doesn’t say ALL the residents are in the honors program, but MOST. So maybe, since you put your app in early, you can put in for the Quad dorm that your friend is planning on asking for. If he states he has a “room mate” request of you, then maybe you can live in the Quad with him. Just a thought.
@AndyDufrense I’m in the exact same situation 
So basically no one who got accepted into their major early one has a chance anymore? Is this true for LAH as well? ;~;
@collegefind : Yep, my “1st” choice major was also in CLA. I got that acceptance lightning fast - around two weeks after I completed my UT app.
The fact that I got my other major so quickly (along with my “Gone to Texas” sign, etc.) made me excited about UT and hopeful (false hope, as it turned out ) that I could be “one and done” with college applications, since UT with Plan II was my top choice.
But once the pre-Christmas wave came and went with no Plan II thick envelope, I had to go to the bench and spend Christmas vacation cranking out a half-dozen apps to assorted OOS private schools that offer similar curricula.
Based on what I know now, I was probably DOA for Plan II after the November wave, and certainly after the December wave. I wish I would have known that, as it would have helped me better plan my other applications. Stringing folks along until March isn’t doing anyone any favors.
Frankly, I’d be much happier with UT Plan II if they’d have been more upfront with me and given me an honest “Sorry, it’s a no” back in November or December. That’s what BHP does.
@TXDad56 : Again, I appreciate the problem-solving thoughts, but I’m just looking to complain, not have my issues solved. 
Seriously, though, the honors quad is a no-go for two reasons:
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As I understand it, the honors quad is only open for non-honors people if there are not enough honors people to completely fill it. Say my buddy requests me as a roommate, but there’s an excess of honors students wanting to live there. Then he loses me as a roomie, replaced with some random honors dude. Same thing happens to me - instead of my buddy, I end up with a random, and also with a random dorm. That would be an unacceptable result.
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If I DID end up in the honors quad, the whole scene would stick in my craw. People would keep asking each other what program they’re in, and I’d have to own up to not being in one. I’d be reminded every day how I was bonged from Plan II. I’d be on a floor with several Plan II kids, including some who squander the opportunity, and I’d keep thinking, “What makes him better than me?” I just couldn’t deal with it. I know that sounds jerky, but keeping it real.
If I DO end up going to UT, I’ll probably target San Jac or Duren, where I can slowly forget Plan II ever existed.
@ploof123 :I haven’t looked specifically at LAH admits in the old threads, but it doesn’t look good, based on last year’s results and this year’s results.
Heck, take a look at those on this thread who just now got January admits. Setting aside the one-off non-standard 15-year-old, you had two late (Dec.1) applications, (@LikeThis and @jondavidson47 ), and one who just got his/her major (@concertoinD). Those are three apps that were all NEW to Plan II in this wave. Nobody with an OLD app (i.e. one that was up for consideration in earlier waves) got any good news. More of the same trend, with no countering evidence.
(FYI: I’m not dogging these posters. Props to them for slaying the essays and delivering what Plan II wanted. Be excellent to each other in Plan II.)
In short, it’s a good news / bad news thing:
Good news: If you haven’t gotten your major yet, even if it goes to the wire, that’s not a deal-breaker for Plan II - you’re still in the game, and you’ll still get a fair hearing.
Bad news: If you HAVE gotten your major some time back, you’ve also already had your “priority consideration”. If it’s a YES, you already know. If it’s a NO - well, now you ALSO already know, thanks to the intertubes. It’s just that Plan II isn’t going to TELL you NO until March.
We’ll revist the topic in March and see if anyone gets a result to disprove my analysis. Hey, prove me wrong!
My son applied on October 15th for UT and Plan 2.He applied for Deans SCHOLAR honors on 11/2.He is not auto admit as is from non ranking private school.
He got admitted to UT CNS with math major on 11/7. Then we got no correspondence for 1st and 2nd wave. He got admitted to Plan 2 which was his 2nd choice on 1/22 and got admitted to Dean’s scholar on 1/26.
So, please don’t lose hope… you never know!
My DD 2 years ago applied both to ECE and Plan II in Sept. She got admitted to ECE within a month and got her admittance to Plan II in late February. We saw wave after wave get accepted to Plan II but not her until the very end. Unfortunately, it was too late. She had already made plans to go elsewhere. But morale of this story, don’t give up yet. There is still hope.
@AndyDufrense I’m fairly certain there is some kind of an internal wait list, and you may just be on that for a while. I highly doubt that, with such stellar grades as you had and a fairly solid resume, that you would just be blatantly overlooked. What did you and the people you showed your essays to think about the essays?
Accepted to LAH!
I applied to the McCombs School of Business in mid-September, as well as BHP, LAH, and Plan II. I was rejected by BHP, but I haven’t heard anything from McCombs, LAH, or Plan II.
Has anyone been accepted to McCombs and NOT heard anything from LAH or Plan II? Maybe (hopefully) Andy is spot on with his assessment.
@jondavidson47 : Thanks for chiming in. I do agree with you that there’s an internal wait list they’re building, where some small fraction of the non-accepted apps are sitting.
But there’s no reason to assume I’m in that pile. Plan II says, right up front, something like “We reject applicants with stellar grades and scores all the time, due to mediocre essays”.
Yeah, I thought my essays were good, as did my proofreader and two (also high-achieving) friends I showed them to. But everyone thinks their essays are good. My AP scores are nothing but 5s, so I’ve been able to deliver good essays repeatedly in that format.
FWIW, my tack on one of them was to talk about how I wasn’t interested in an honor program just for the sake of being in an honor program - that my interest in Plan II was specific to its curriculum and its learning environment. Who knows - maybe they took that as “Hey, he doesn’t care about being in an honor program - so let’s give the slot to someone who IS all focused on getting into an honor program - any honor program.”
@AndyDufrense hmm, I haven’t seen aplpy texas essays that talk specifically about plan II or even UT. The prompts are supposed to be common essays for all the apply texas schools you chose to apply to, so IF there is a problem with your essay, it might just be that’s it’s a little too on the nose. i THINK (i am not the admission committee so take this with a grain of salt) that they wanted you to write about your life goals and educational values in a general sense, and would evaluate to see who genuinely matches plan II. Now, did I add in some things to my essay that specifically match up to plan II, to make my intentions more explicit? of course. But nobody I know mentioned plan II itself, so it could be that your essay took a more narrow approach than they would have liked.
@jondavidson47 : You may well have something there. It was Essay C that I morphed into “I love the concept of Plan II”, since it asks about your “future academic plans”. I didn’t have to make it generic because a) I wasn’t applying anywhere else with ApplyTexas, and b) my other major (which I’m being vague about to avoid completely outing myself) tends to attract rather, errr, “non-serious” students, so I was quite confident I could get into it, even with an essay all about how I want to be in some different major. (Hey, I was right about that, at least!)
I thought they’d appreciate an essay that was cleearly specific for them, rather than a generic, obviously recycled, “Why is my top choice”. But I can see how they could take it as kissing up.
So, again, advice for the future kiddos, based on one data point - don’t write about Plan II in your essays - it doesn’t help.
My other advice is “Make sure your senior schedule is balanced”. My schedule is STEM-heavy in senior year. I am 100% NOT a STEM guy, but due to the needed prerequisites at our school, I had to leave the AP STEM until senior year. To make space, I doubled up on AP social sciences as a junior AND a sophomore, but nothing as a senior. To make things worse,I lost my 4th year AP language to a conflict.
So my senior schedule, in a vacuum, looks like that of a total STEM fanatic. 4 hours of STEM, 1 hour of English, my EC, and an early release. I doubt that did me any favors as far as being seen as “well-rounded”.
What was your full Fresh-Senior schedule? What are your EC’s, any jobs? Community service? What was you other major?
Missing the AP language could have been a problem for you. Also, any chance your LoR’s are anything less than stellar? Often, well you see a high-stats candidates, high rigor, etc with strong ability to communicate and they get denied, it can sometimes be a teach wrote a generic or even damaging LoR.
In our session @ Plan II, they reiterated that you need to write good essays, but that the actual topic is less important that style and writing ability. Judging from your posts, that doesn’t appear to have been a problem. Last, after crossing a certain threshold, stats / grades are less important to Plan II.
PM me if you don’t want to “out” yourself, but I doubt Plan II adcoms are reading this thread, especially at this time of the year, and your application situation is intriguing and could help others in the future.
-psy
My daughter got into Plan 2 (decision in Dec 2015) and Dean’s last week. Waiting on out of state schools to make final decision.
Still waiting …
I wonder if the schools taking longer to review (ahem…McCombs) are decreasing the chances of acceptance into Plan II. According to AndyDufrense, at the information session, the Plan II representative said that Plan II doesn’t receive the application until the school (ahem … McCombs) makes its decision. But if McCombs doesn’t make its decision until a few days before March 1, then Plan II will be flooded with applications right before March 1. That makes me feel like I won’t get the same attention from Plan II that I would have received earlier on in the process. Moreover, Plan II probably has a better handle on the projected yield by March 1. I’m not sure if that hurts or helps my chances of receiving admission into Plan II. Ugh.
@WaitingforTexas I attended the session last year with my son at Plan II. This is not what they said in our session. They said that they cannot RELEASE your acceptance to you until your first choice major makes a decision. They mentioned that they wanted to change that and be allowed to send out acceptance on PlanII as soon as they have made a decision- my son asked his admissions officer if this was changed for this year and she said no- it’s stlll like that. So they won’t be reviewing your file - it likely has already been reviewed and they will inform you once your first choice major makes a decision.
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