UT Austin Class of 2030 Official Thread

Colleges & Universities The University of Texas at Austin
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That is true. Not sure how that relates to a school being well run.

I have only run into reading about housing issues with UT and Purdue. For the record it appears the mom’s on here and the students on here have vastly differing views if housing is tight at UT. Not a shock there. Purdue straight up cannot determine how many students will accept their offers. They were off by over a thousand one year and had to put students in the basement of a building and one even reported being near the loading bay of another. My only experiences have been the Naval Academy and Notre Dame. Both of which don’t play games with kids housing because a kid should worry about what classes they want to take not if they will be homeless.

Everyone wants something different when they choose a school. I never thought having a bed or not would be a deciding factor.

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For someone from Texas, tuition at ND is 8x that of UT. You think Texas is the one taking advantage of students, because of a $100 deposit?

The football coach Nick Saban had an expression he would use when one of his assistant coaches was focusing on something small and missing the big picture, “You are talking about mouse droppings, and there is elephant excrement all over the room.”

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146

Ok…you say don’t think schools should admit more students than they have beds for. That’s fine but I definitely don’t agree. So many kids prefer the private dorms. And there are just so many housing options. It would be a shame if UT limited th size of its freshman class by the number of on campus beds available. And it would but the auto admit cutoff substantially. It’s already at top 5 percent. If they reduce the class size by forty percent, imagine how would be!

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The good thing about UT is it doesnt force you to stay on campus.

We visited several schools that had horrific dorms but they had to live on campus housing.

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148

You’ll have to explain your intent or meaning behind this comment.

If your experience is only the Naval Academy and Notre Dame it explains some of your comments regarding perspective. I have experience with my kids at UT-A, Purdue and UNC. Plus I live in Raleigh, just 2 miles from NCSU Campus so I’m quite familiar with the student/campus situation here.

I think using either of those two institutions and comparing them to large public flagship universities is , for lack of a better term, apples to oranges.

These just aren’t comparable situations.

Notre Dame has to manage 2,000 incoming freshman a year of a student body of 9k UG and maybe 4k grads, in a small city (100k) facing basically no increasing housing pressure from the general public (Nobody is moving to South Bend), on a 1,200+ acre campus on the outer edge of the city, with a private administration which can pivot at will. And the kids are paying $90k out of pocket (if they are paying full boat)

UT Austin has to manage around 10,000 incoming freshman of a student population of around 43k UG and another 10k grads, on a 430 acre campus, in the center of a city with a population of 1M and has had a sustained growth rate of around 4-5% for a couple decades of higher income move-ins, at a State run public institution which requires years to plan and authorize changes. And the instate students who make up 90% of the population are paying a max COA of 32-35k.yr. UT-A has limited University owned housing in this situation, but what they do have is a significant amount of outsourced University associated privately owned housing that sits right around the campus - and as explained earlier, because of it’s small campus size (430 acres), much of this privately owned apartment complexes student population is closer to the campus facilities (like the classrooms, Student Rec center, DKR) than students on other campuses who are living in “on campus housing”.

Plus I mean, I could afford a lot more private housing with a COA difference of $35k versus 90K a year. So there’s that.

And similarly, comparisons between a State Public Flagship and the Naval Academy are also apples and oranges.

Purdue’s housing issues are a function of their problems in both trying to grow their student enrollment but also have some issues with unanticipated yield on top of intended growth. They misjudged it a few years in a row (it went from around 23-24% to 29% and it resulted in a lot more students on campus than anticipated. While they are on a much larger campus size than say UT-Austin, they too are a Publicly run institution which means everything takes more time to facilitate change - however, they have been undergoing major campus facilities upgrades (their student recreation center is -phenomenal- and their classroom/educational buildings are really getting upgrades) but only recently have they been making progress on dorm housing expansions. West Lafeyette is smaller than South Bend but has grow by greater than 50% in the past 12-15 years so there has been housing pressure from non-students – however due to the sustained growth of the town and the commitments of the university to grow the student population permanently, private housing construction immediately off campus has really started to kick in to high gear as well.

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I believe U FL also has a similar process for housing deposit before acceptance, at least my son did soon after applying. It is less $, however.

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Totally understand what you are saying and if I were the president of a school under pressure to make as much money as possible I’d probably have to rationalize it too. To me, that does not make it acceptable.

if I had 1000 beds then I’d admit xxx amount over that based on trends however as every good business student knows it’s supply and demand. If UTs customers don’t mind how the product is served to them then more power to them to continue to serve it in that manner. Clearly I’m in the minority in thinking a kid should not have to worry about living accommodations.

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I’m just not getting that impression from your responses to be honest, but I’m not Don Quixote so I’m not going to try to expound or debate it any further at this point. We’ve been through this process with D22 and S24, and now D26 - and looked/applied to many of the same schools - ND, UT-Austin, UNC, Michigan(?), UVA(?) plus a number of others. Thus far it’s worked out pretty well for our first two. Good luck to your daughter, I’m guessing she will end up at the right fit for her.

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Would you consider UT “well run” if they charged $20k more for OOS tuition like U Mich and UVA and got rid of the $100 deposit?

Maybe that’s the solution. Let’s just charge OOS students $62k instead of $43k. But at least people will be happier because they dont have to pay an extra $100 deposit on housing.

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Several colleges like Texas A&M and Georgia only ask for your deposit once you get accepted. It’s a money grab by the the Longhorns (first of many). If it wasn’t, they should refund your money if you don’t get accepted.

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How would you descriibe UVA and UMich tuition compared to UT?

No offense to a&m. They’re not as popular or as selective as UT - not even close. And if it was a “money grab”, UT would charge the same tuition as some other top tier public schools.

Is U Mich and UVA’s tuition also a “money grab”?

Don’t like it? Don’t apply.

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When you buy an airline ticket do you get upset when you get to the airport and they tell you it’s oversold and you were last to check in so sorry but you have no seat? How about paying for check bags when just a few years ago they were always free?

All these processes have evolved over time conditioning a customer to accept it as is. People still give airlines money and are still giving institutions money hand over fist despite the product they receive is less than acceptable. In fact, the customers are defending the practice which is the ultimate in business psychological change.

Interestingly enough if you go to Penn State’s website they state right on there, “All incoming freshman are guaranteed housing.” So not all public institutions are run in the same manner.

Again, I’m clearly in the minority of customers deciding if UT will get my money.

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You seem fixated on the $100 deposit. The point is that college is so expensive, any school could charge an extra $100 somewhere if they wanted to.

Would you be upset if their OOS tuition was $45k instead of $42k?

Would you be upset if their application fee was $95 instead of $75?

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Not fixated on anything. I just find it fascinating they do it and people are happy with it.

Make the application fee $150 instead of $100 but like airlines they nickel and dime their customers and customers will rationalize it by saying I’d rather my ticket be XX dollars less since I don’t check a bag despite the ticket price being the same.

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I don’t think the point is the $ 100 Deposit on housing. I believe most places do housing deposits. I believe the complaint is the timing - coming before ‘anyone’ is officially admitted. And because the UT University Housing can’t accommodate all incoming freshman, this creates a ‘pressure’ on parents (and their kids) to put down $ 100 before they’re even admitted (or declined) so they don’t get ‘shut out’ and have to find their own housing.

I think there is some point in that view - alternatively, they could wait until an admission offer comes (like UGA, where you can put a housing deposit down for like $50 once you have an admission offer, but before you accept the offer to attended (and have to put down money towards that as well) or as other schools do, you get an admissions offer and have to accept your spot before you can access university housing to put a deposit down there as well. Or alternatively, they could have one singular date to open housing deposits say two or three days after the RDs come out.

I do think UT’s student admissions situation does change some of the way this looks, if you understand the Texas Top 5% Class Rank and a ‘guaranteed admissions’ spot where 75% of the entire class is comprised of kids who know they have an automatic admission -and- will go there (Major Caps not withstanding).

I am skeptical that UT-A is doing it as a straight up major money grab for funding though - I’m guessing there is some other factor that leads them to do it this way, we just aren’t in the know on it.

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I really just see it as the Spirit Airlines model—you have to pay for each individual thing (parking, housing, deposit, dining, etc.) vs you pay more upfront but you don’t have to make more individual payments. For a lot of students UT is a bargain–I get financial aid and live in a cheap apartment, which makes UT a great deal for the quality of education. I can choose not to pay for the parking permit or the on-campus housing or whatever, and others can shell out more money than myself to live in the Castilian, and it works out for both of us. Not sure that equates to poor management; I see it as a selling point honestly.

I also suspect a lot of the reasoning behind things like this is because the state of Texas mandates that all university programs have to pay for themselves. So parking, housing, etc., which incentivizes the schools to pass those costs on to the consumer instead of including it in tuition.

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Im not sure how people can view $100 deposit as a “money grab”. Seriously? There are a million ways to drive revenue and $100 can be hidden in numerous fees.

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I tend to agree with that train of thought - I suspect it does something else for them, somehow the $100 deposit, in advance of admissions, gives them guidance on some other factors they want information on or planning etc or influences applicant behaviors in some other way. Perhaps it allows them to start slotting housing on admitted students faster, reducing the time crunch to do it in a more compressed period, or they can use it as a barometer of how quickly the UT Housing is going to fill up so they can notify the later admitted students that most of the UT housing is already allotted so please look at these UT associated private housing situations - when they get their letter of admission.

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OMG is definitely a money grab. We are a middle income family and every dollar counts. My daughter worked very hard to get into college and has a job to help her save money. Every dollar counts and if she does not get in…this is money she could use at a different college. And by the way A&M has more students applying to it than Texas. 75k at A&M and 73k for Texas. Maybe they are using the money to help pay for their football team that did not make it to the playoffs.