Does attending Austin Community College (ACC) help your external UT-Austin transfer admissions chances?
Home Office at a festival in Glenorchy, New Zealand
No.
Taking classes at ACC does not improve or have any influence on your UT-Austin transfer admissions chances. Attending, enrolling at, taking classes online, or receiving your Associate’s from Austin Community College is completely irrelevant for your UT transfer chances. In fact, enrolling at ACC may well harm your transfer prospects, which I discuss further down.
Let me say this again. No, you should not move to ACC from another city. No, if you’re at Lonestar College in Houston or Collin College, you should not move out of county to ACC. If you’re a parent, no, you probably shouldn’t send your child away to ACC when your local community college is more than adequate.
Summary of the below arguments: Enrolling at ACC away from home does not help your chances, is substantially more expensive, has a higher potential for going wrong, offers no unique academic opportunities, and is almost always an excuse to simply move to Austin.
Check out my new book Surviving the College Admissions Madness and Youtube Channel
Dispelling the ACC Myth
If you’re prepared to move away from home, why would you not enroll at a four-year university anyway? Enrolling at ACC out of district costs as much as most four year Texas public university degrees. Out-of-district ACC students living in an apartment costs around $26,500 each year. Out of district tuition alone is $10,890 compared with $2,500 for Austin area residents. ACC is a perfectly fine place to begin your studies if you’re from the Austin area. It’s frankly insane and irresponsible that families spend this much for their child to enroll at a community college that is a tenth of the price if they remained at home.
A current community college student just emailed me, and I’m thankful that they did because my response hopefully saves them time and money. It isn’t their fault for suspecting some connection between ACC and UT because it’s common advice pedaled on College Confidential or social media.
“I’m currently enrolled at a community college 2.5 hours away from Austin. My question is are there any major advantages to transferring from ACC into UT that I wouldn't get from any other community college such as the one I am at now? Does UT tend to prefer ACC transfer students over others? Would attending ACC give me an upper hand in external transfer for UT?”
The answer to each of these questions is a categorical, unequivocal no.
The “ACC helps transfer UT admissions chances” is the most intractable myth that simply won’t go away. It’s also incredibly costly and therefore not innocent or neutral. Families asked me this ten years ago when I served as a UT admissions counselor, and it’s the most common FAQ I receive now when students are not admitted as freshman or current university students somehow think it’s a good idea to move away and pay more expensive tuition.
They may see transfer statistics that show that many UT students begin their studies at ACC and mistakenly correlate ACC attendance causes better UT chances. However, a higher proportion of students enroll at ACC from UT because it’s the most popular option for ACC students. Collin College or Tarrant County College presumably send plenty of students to UT, but those students may also be more inclined to go to North Texas, Houston, SMU, etc. Co-enrollment programs like PACE that are offered to only a handful of students further entrench the myth that ACC somehow helps one’s transfer chances.
Some admissions myths have a nugget of truth like applying earlier might increase your admissions chances infinitesimally but largely doesn’t make any difference. However, there is absolutely zero logic thinking ACC improves your UT chances.
Not only does UT not care about where you attend a community college or receive an Associate’s, they also don’t consider whether you attend a four or two-year university. Academically, they’re solely concerned with your college GPA.
It sounds weird to not bake into the equation to account for perceived rigor differences of MIT and Texas A&M, but how would such a weighting system work? Although it makes intuitive sense to give different weights to different caliber programs, there isn’t a fair or equitable way to do so. How many bonus points an MIT student should receive over a Texas A&M student is an impossible logistical problem to solve. UT wants to see how you’ve taken advantage of or maximized the resources in your environment, nothing more. Admissions can be very confusing, but this is one simple, clear area that you need not overthink. A 2.2 GPA from MIT isn’t going to get into UT-Austin or even Texas A&M under any circumstance ever. Why would UT want an MIT dropout over a stellar community college student?
Consider: why would UT-Austin have a secret, unwritten policy that privileges students from Central Texas? How would they even assign bonus points for attending ACC? Why would it be fair to give ACC students a leg up at the expense of students at any other Texas community college who are unlikely to have the finances or luxury to move away from home for a two-year degree? If UT did give advantage to ACC students, there should be a media, political, and public uproar over such an unfair practice.
It’s simply a coincidence that the flagship university is located in the state capital, Austin. Not all public flagships are located in the capital or their state’s biggest city like U Michigan Ann Arbor, U Virginia Charlottesville, or UNC-Chapel Hill among many others. Would it make sense for U Michigan to give preference to Ann Arbor’s Washtenaw Community College students at the expense of community college students from Detroit? No.
All Texas community colleges have the same credit transfer system, so the ACC education is in theory equivalent to that offered anywhere else. UT’s Transfer Resources page indeed had ACC transfer guides, but they also provide guides for every other community college system. If you step back and think for just a second how ridiculous an ACC secret bonus is, you’ll realize the myth has no basis in reality. It doesn’t make any damned sense yet hundreds of families fall for it every year.
ACC does not help your UT admissions chances. ACC does not help your UT admissions chances. ACC does not help your UT admissions chances.
In case the above isn’t clear, let me unpack the harms of the ACC myth further.
Reasons why you should not enroll at ACC if you are not from Central Texas
There are a lot of bad reasons why students decide to enroll at ACC or persuade their parents it’s a good idea. They “want the Austin experience,” which is almost always coded word for partying or hanging onto the coattails of sororities and fraternities. If they aren’t ready for a four-year university, why would they be mature enough to live away from home to attend community college?
There is absolutely no reason to move away from home to attend ACC.
There are precisely zero instances in my decade career that persuaded me it was in the student’s best interest to enroll at ACC away from home solely because they think it will improve their admissions chances. There may be other reasons to move like a new job, pursuing music or film, leaving an abusive home, escaping a natural disaster, etc where Austin the city is sincerely a better option for options beyond ACC.
In almost all cases, students want to move to Austin because it’s an awesome city, and they mistakenly believe it will help their chances. More times than not, they want to party, and that’s okay, it just means they’re moving on false pretenses that ACC is the best option for transferring to UT. Even during COVID, there were students enrolling in ACC online classes because they think it helps their chances. Wealthy families will try everything in their power to gain even the slightest real or perceived advantages even if it makes absolutely no sense, like paying the equivalent of a four-year degree for community college.
Parents, I’ll be super honest. If you let your child persuade you to rent them an apartment in Austin hours away from your hometown, you’re foolish.
Look, it’s fine if you want your child to be more independent, but don’t convince yourself of the illusion that you have their academic interests in mind. They’re not moving to Austin to prioritize their grades and studying. Enrolling at ACC necessarily puts academic priorities second, which jeopardizes eventual transfer options. The biggest mistake prospective transfers can make is not doing everything in their power to earn straight A’s. Therefore, enrolling at ACC is more likely to harm rather than help a student’s eventual transfer.
Enrolling at ACC out of county has almost no upsides and only downsides. If living at home is an option, research suggests that recent HS graduates beginning their studies at a local college earn substantially better grades than their independent counterparts.
The logic is simple. Living away from home for the first time, paying bills, making meals, meeting new people, navigating a new city, etc. puts pressure on and takes time away from studying. ACC doesn’t have the upside of a four-year university’s robust mental health services network, residence hall meal plans, student organizations, and campus life. There are many opportunities to make poor decisions regarding drugs, alcohol, and bungled time management.
I once had a client who enrolled at ACC away from their hometown to join a fraternity, for “the college experience.” They experienced hazing so substantial that it put them in the hospital and completely derailed their final exams. Their grades tanked, they were denied UT-Austin transfer admission, and they needed to move away from Austin and return home to attend a four-year university.
It’s undeniable that if you enroll at ACC and live in a West Campus private dorm or apartment, you’re going to be a UT Wannabe even if you don’t realize or refuse to admit it. I understand the FOMO of your friends moving away from home and people having the “college experience,” but do you really want to be on the low end of the totem pole?
You may get lucky and find friends or roommates who support your UT ambitions, but there’s no escaping that you will be an outsider to some degree. Socially, it seems like an awkward situation to intentionally place yourself. Enrolling at ACC from out of county is also the height of privilege for a student’s parents willing to pay potentially ten times the amount when including living and moving expenses relative to their local option.
Enrolling at ACC will not improve your UT-Austin admissions chances.