University of Texas restricts automatic admissions threshold to 5%

AUSTIN – The Houston Chronicle reports the University of Texas plans to automatically admit students in the top 5% in their graduating class who apply to attend the school as undergraduates in fall 2026 — the lowest rate in the school’s history. UT President Jay Hartzell announced during a Faculty Council meeting Monday that the university would be changing its automatic admissions rate percentage, according to the Austin American-Statesman. The school has automatically admitted students in the top 6% of their graduating class as undergraduates since fall 2019, when it raised the bar from 7%. Under state law, Texas public universities are required to admit students who graduate in the top 10% of their class at any Texas high school. However, as the number of graduates and applications continued to grow, lawmakers passed Senate Bill 175 in 2009 allowing UT to accept a lower percentage of students compared to other universities due to capacity concerns starting in 2011.

UT is legally required to admit 90 percent of its first-year students from in-state residents, including 75% of whom are automatically admitted. The remaining in-state students, along with transfer and out-of-state students, are admitted through a holistic review process, which includes class rank, test scores, essays and special accomplishments. The change comes after the university reported a record number of applications, enrolled freshmen and overall enrollment during the 2023-24 school year. According to the school, 66,109 students applied to attend UT, 9,385 first-time, first-year undergraduate students enrolled, and total enrollment reached 53,082 students. UT said it is “committed to continuing to provide world-class classroom and research experiences for our students, even while we are facing record demand.” The demand has been driven “both by the success and growth of Texas, and by greater interest in UT among the state’s best high-school students,” according to the school. “We see no signs that our demand will substantially fall, and revising our auto-admit percentage to 5% will allow us to continue to meet the state’s requirement that 75% of the Texas residents in each freshman class are admitted based on high-school class rank,” the university said in a statement.