High school seniors are incredibly stressed about college applications – especially if they attend any of the extremely competitive schools in Prosper ISD. Seniors who applied to the University of Texas at Austin may be asking if they will be able to attend the school after delays in admission decisions and automatic admission changes.

Before 2011, Section 51.803 of the Texas Education Code guaranteed that high school students who graduated within the top 10% of their class received automatic admission at UT Austin. Since the fall of 2017, that percentage dropped to the top 7%. Then, the automatic admission policy changed again to the top 6% starting from the 2019-2020 academic year. And now, from the fall of 2026 and onwards, when I start applying, only 5% of students will be automatically admitted. 

That is only about 44 students out of 733 of the senior graduating class for the current school year, and more than three-quarters of these students will not get into the major they applied for due to the high amounts of competition.

See the trend here? The application process has become chaotic, competition has skyrocketed, and tension among students has doubled. Simply put, UT Austin is now insanely hard to apply and get into. It feels like high schoolers who fall just outside the 5% cut-off or have an average standardized test score are expected to have cured cancer and have to be the president of every club in existence just to have a decent chance to attend. If students apply to an engineering or business major without being in the top 5% next year, they will have a nearly impossible chance of getting in. 

Not to mention, UT Austin has returned to requiring standardized test scores for the fall 2025 season, only exacerbating stress, especially for those whose potential isn’t demonstrated on these tests. This is after four years of test-optional admissions, which not only diversified the student body but also allowed for more well-rounded students. 

Another mess with the UT Austin admissions process for the 2024-2025 school year is early action decisions. There have been multiple cases at Prosper High School where students haven’t gotten their early action decisions for the majors they applied for. When they click on their status, they are met with the doomed sentence, “Your application is still in review.” Decisions were supposed to come out Jan. 15, but now, it’s already a week into February. That is almost two weeks late, adding more stress to these students’ lives and potentially messing up their college commitments and scholarship applications. 

If that wasn’t bad enough, some regular decision seniors got their decision before early action students. An error like this is unacceptable on UT Austin’s part and affects so many students’ futures.

From what we have seen this year, applications are in disarray, and hopefully next year, the application process and decisions can go more smoothly even though competition is bound to go up. 

Editor’s note: This article was updated on Feb. 16, 2024 to correct the statistics.

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