Tex Admissions First-Time Freshman Client Fall 2021 Outcomes and Results
Each year, I publish my client outcomes and overall UT admissions statistics. Although UT admitted for Fall 2021 a record low 25% of their applicants, 30 out of 48 clients (63%) gained admission to their first choice UT-Austin major.
Two clients received Forty Acres Scholarship Program semifinalist interviews. Seven gained admission to Plan II, two for Liberal Arts Honors, and one each among Turing, Health Science Scholars, and Business Honors. Two clients received nominations for the Presidential Scholars Program, one received Texas A&M Engineering’s full-ride Brown Scholarship, and others for the full-ride for Baylor’s combined BS/JD program and the IBM Watson scholarship. Out-of-state full-tuition merit offers include Washington-Seattle, Maryland, Alabama, Purdue, and Miami.
Four clients gained Early Decision admission to UPenn Wharton/Huntsman, Rice, Carnegie Mellon, and Miami.
I assisted over half of my clients with their applications nationwide, including admission to over thirty universities on the US News Top 50 list. Notable outcomes: Princeton, Harvard, MIT, Pennsylvania Wharton, Rice BS/MD, Notre Dame, NYU, Michigan, Georgetown, Emory, and Amherst.
Five students gained admission to Illinois CS, and four others were admitted to Rice. Three students gained admission to Georgia Tech, Carnegie Mellon, and Tulane Honors w/scholarship. Two students received admissions to USC and NYU and two others with scholarship offers from Northeastern and Washington-Seattle.
My clients also received offers to the University of California at Berkeley, Los Angeles, Irvine, Davis, Santa Barbara, Riverside, San Diego, and Santa Cruz.
Two niche programs with less than a 2% admissions include Brown/RISD dual degree and the Rice/Baylor combined BS.
Clients admitted to UT but chose to attend elsewhere include: Rice BS/MD, Penn Wharton, Rice, Bucknell, Carnegie Mellon, MIT, and Miami.
“Thank you for helping our family with the college admission process. Having you assist with the essay edits saved our family hours of arguments. I knew our son could do it, but having outside input made the process so much smoother. He is OVER the moon excited as you would expect. We have a sophomore daughter so you will hear from us again in a year or so! Save her a spot. Thank you! Thank you!”
I’ve converted my UT outcomes into rule-of-thumb minimum rank and test score recommendations that I’ve updated since Fall 2021 to consider yourself competitive to UT majors. For Fall 2022, I’m employing a strict cutoff of top 15% with a 1400/31 for taking on clients and higher for selective majors/OOS applicants because very view outside of those academics will be competitive for most UT programs.
My recommendations will not change because of UT-Austin going test-optional, which I discuss here. If you choose not to submit an ACT/SAT, you still need to have most or all A’s on the honors/AP track to be competitive, especially for majors that are in high demand.
In this post I share:
About the creative feedback and editing process of my client services
Summary of my clients’ UT admissions outcomes
Detailed data about their academic profiles and outcomes by college/school
Master list of all university and scholarship offers
Something new this year by lifting the hood on some Tex Admissions analytics
Check out my new book Surviving the College Admissions Madness and Youtube Channel
Tex Admissions Client Services Process
My clients worked very hard this past cycle. Typically, we process three to five rounds of essay and resume revisions before submitting. On average, we spend six weeks on Apply Texas and the UT application. For my 28 clients where we collaborated on applications in addition to Apply Texas, their writing improved substantially with each subsequent draft. Since Fall 2016, 158 out of 256 first-time clients have gained admission (61%).
Over 100 first-time freshman and transfer clients since Fall 2017 have submitted my end-of-year questionnaire soliciting feedback with 1 as strongly disagree and 5 as strongly agree with the following statements.
My clients answered 4.9/5 in strong agreement with the statement: Do you feel that you submitted your strongest application? All 23 clients for Fall 2021 answered with 5s.
How satisfied are you overall with our work? They rated our work 4.8/5
4.8/5 feel satisfied with counseling services - communication, guidance, expertise
They responded with agree 4s and strongly agree 5s, 300 times out of 308 possible answers
Fall 2021 freshman clients answered strongly agree 95% of the time and 5% agree. All who responded would recommend me to their friends and family. Nobody responded with a 3 or lower to any question, and only one student responded with a 4.
“Kevin helped me get admitted to 11 universities out of 15 I have applied to, including UT Austin, UCLA, UC San Diego, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, among others. I applied to Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or ECE. Kevin was very concerned about my prospects because I could not have an SAT test here, in Europe. Still, with my perfect GPA and Kevin’s help guiding me throughout creating a captivating essay, we have accomplished an outstanding result.”
Interested in working together? Complete my questionnaire for a free consultation
Client Results Summary
30 of 48 my Fall 2021 first-time freshman clients gained admission including 18 out of 34 non-automatically Texas residents and out-of-state/international applicants 53% admissions rate compared with 8-12% university average). One top 6% client was denied their first-choice major.
My typical client comes from the top 10% of their class scoring around a 32.7 or 1490 on the ACT/SAT. My average client this year was similar academically to 2020. By contrast, I estimate that the average admitted UT student comes from the top 7% of their class scoring around a 31 or 1360 on the ACT/SAT. Three out of six test-optional clients gained admission, including one international student. On average, they applied to around 12 schools, ranging from a low of 2 to a high of 27. I share my tips and philosophy for building a reasonable college list.
My clients tend to have above-average resumes with a few exceptions in both directions. Many aim for honors or selective majors like Business, Engineering, or Computer Science. All of them completed their application by the November 1 priority deadline. Many gain admission to selective and prestigious programs nationwide.
You can view the academic breakdowns for popular majors like Computer Science, The Cockrell School of Engineering, and the McCombs School of Business in the linked posts.
Those not getting into UT almost always have a UTD Scholarship with Honors and Texas A&M Honors as second and third chances. Others attend SMU, TCU, Baylor, and non-Texas universities on scholarships and honors programs.
No student who applied to Texas A&M or UT-Dallas engineering/computer science was rejected, and many were offered honors and scholarships. Clients not admitted to UT enrolled, usually with scholarships, at Northeastern, Clemson Honors, Loyola Marymount, A&M Honors, UTD Honors, Alabama full-ride scholarship, and UC Davis, among others.
I provide a comprehensive list of all of the universities and scholarships my clients earned for Fall 2020 at the bottom of this post. Overall, I am pleased with their results, and I feel our work makes a positive difference in their chances. I provide a shorter summary first followed by specific data.
Here is a scatterplot showing admitted and denied students regardless of program - all scores are converted into SAT. As you can see, great rank and test scores are no guarantees of admission, and sometimes students with slightly lower credentials find success depending on their first choice major.
Four out of seven test-optional admitted students not pictured
Check out my new book Surviving the College Admissions Madness and Youtube Channel
Fall 2020 UT-Austin Applicant Data
First, I present the demographic and academic information of my clients. Second, I discuss their outcomes. Later, I will analyze this data and discuss potential implications.
Where do my clients come from and what are their academics?
Automatically admitted Texas Residents (Top 6%): 13
Non-automatically admitted Texas Residents: 27
Non-Texas OOS/Foreign: 8
Test-optional: 8
Average Class Rank of all clients, including estimating for non-ranking schools: Top 10%
Client Academic Index Range based on my formulas: 3.01 to 3.96
Client Academic Index Average: 3.63
Academic Index Admit Average: 3.72
Academic Index Deny/CAP Average: 3.5
Client Average ACT: 32.7
ACT Range: 28 - 36
Admit Average ACT: 32.6
Deny/CAP Average ACT: 32.9
Client Average SAT: 1458
SAT Range: 1390 - 1590
Admit Average SAT: 1510
Deny/CAP Average SAT: 1478
The biggest surprise a top 15% McCombs applicant with a 36 who was denied. A top 3% and SAT 1470 girl with extensive STEM experience was rejected to Computer Science.
Overall, there were 3 students I felt confident would get in, who didn’t (including 2 OOS computer science applicants), and 3 I wasn’t confident would gain admission and who did (including a Computational Engineering). 8 borderline “maybes” gained admission while ten were rejected. Every year, there are a few surprises in both directions.
I estimate that my average client receives a 5 out of 6 on their Personal Achievement Index score review based the holistic review process (less than 1% of all applicants receive a 6). I estimate that 5 clients earned the highest review score of 6. Each of my projected sixes gained admission, including some with below-average academics.
The Academic Index is how UT calculate a student's class rank and test scores. This single number accounts for 50% of a student's admissions review. The highest AI score is a 4, and the typical UT applicant has around a 3. UT has not updated this formula since 2014, so I’ve created my own called the Adjusted Academic Index. I will modify and update these formulas with new information I’ve learned for Fall 2020 and onward.
Client UT-Austin Admissions Outcomes
30/48 Clients gained admission (63%)
18/35 non-top 6% Texas Residents and OOS/international gained admission (51%)
Profile of the typical admitted client: Top 8.3% scoring a 32.6 or a 1510 on the ACT/SAT
Profile of the typical denied/CAP/PACE client: Top 14.3% scoring a 32.9 or a 1478 on the ACT/SAT
Four out of seven test-optional clients gained admission, including two international students.
In almost all cases, UT only considers a student's first-choice major. UT compares applicants against those seeking their first choice.
First-choice majors admits/applicants
6/10 Business including 1 Canfield Business Honors admits from 3 Interviews
5/10 Computer Science including 1 OOS Turing Scholar
6/9 Natural Sciences including 1 Health Science Scholars
6/7 Engineering
2/6 Moody Communications
2/3 Liberal Arts including 7 Plan II Honors and 2 Liberal Arts Honors admits
1/1 Architecture
1/1 Education
0/1 Geosciences
List of all UT-Austin offers: Two Forty Acres Semifinalist, Liberal Arts Honors, Plan II Honors, Canfield Business Honors, Architecture, Computational/Mechanical/Architectural/ECE/Civil Engineering, Communications, Journalism, PR/Advertising, Mathematics, Neuroscience, Biology, and Astronomy
Check out my new book Surviving the College Admissions Madness and Youtube Channel
Complete list of all admitted universities
Universities that offered Honors and/or Merit Scholarships (half tuition or greater in bold)
Adelphi, Alabama, Amherst, Arizona, Arizona State, Auburn, Babson, Baylor, Brown, Bucknell, California State Polytechnic, Carnegie Mellon, CU-Boulder, Emory, Florida, Fresno State, Georgetown, Georgia, Georgia Tech, Harvard, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Loyola Marymount, Maryland, Miami, Miami (OH), Michigan, MIT, Northeastern, Notre Dame, NYU, Ohio State, Penn State, Penn Wharton/Huntsman, Pepperdine, Pratt, Princeton, Purdue, Rhode Island School of Design, Rice-Baylor BS/MD, Rose Hulman Tech, Rutgers, San Diego State, SMU, Syracuse, TCU, Tennessee, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Trinity, Tulane, U California (Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Riverside, San Diego, Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz), USC, UT-Arlington, UT-Dallas, Virginia, Virginia Wesleyan, Washington, Wisconsin
You can view the full list of results since 2016 on this page.
“These past eight months may have seemed to be the longest and most stressful of my life. Working with Kevin has been the light at the end of this dark tunnel. I have never received such personal and insightful help by any hired tutor or high school teacher compared to Kevin and his excellent mind. I truly fail to recall any instance of frustration regarding Kevin’s assistance and contact. I forget that he works with other students because I always feel like his number one priority. Kevin provided services I could never replicate, and I have learned so much beyond college admissions. We brainstormed on a lengthy call to approach my ideas and stories from totally unique perspectives. Kevin can transform personal experiences and work magic with them. In the end, I submitted essays combining aspects of my religious beliefs, family background, and photography business that I’m confident helped tip the scales in my favor, especially since I was a test-optional McCombs applicant ranked outside the top 6%. There is simply no other way to put it: Kevin wanted me to gain admission maybe more than myself. His enthusiasm never ceased. He went above and beyond any expectation I had. If there is any hesitation in moving forward with Kevin’s services, and if I had to do this (God forbid) a thousand more times, Kevin would be the only person I would go to!”