AUSTIN (KXAN)- The University of Texas Austin announced Monday it will drop the percentage of Texas high school students automatically admitted to the university from 6% to 5%. The school said in a statement that the change is necessary in order to meet the state’s requirement that 75% of the Texas residents in each freshman class are admitted based on high school class rank. This change is expected to impact admissions for Fall 2026.
Dale Price, the Founder and CEO of Access College America, spoke with KXAN’s Mike Rush about the reasoning behind this change and potential impact on future UT Austin applicants.
Read the transcription of the interview below or watch using the video player above. Some responses have been edited for clarity.
Rush: Joining us this afternoon is Dale Price from Access College America, a company that provides college planning to high school scholars. Thanks for being here, Dale, appreciate it.
Price: Thanks so much for having me.
Rush: So why do you think the university made this change?
Price: Well, I don’t think they really had much of a choice. This is all based off of algorithms. There’s a state law that says that the University of Texas must admit 75% of their incoming class from an auto admit percentile range. And last year, they received about 73,000 applications. They’re just running out of room. And then, you know, they also have to admit, or at least have room, for about 25% of those incoming freshmen to be holistically reviewed. So they’re doing this to make room for a quarter of the other applicants that do need to be evaluated.
Rush: So we’re talking about students who might be coming from other states, students who might be international, or even students right here in Texas who don’t fall in that upper echelon from their high school graduation. So this would impact them in a positive way. In other words, keep space for them to be able to try to come to the university.
Price: It would be reasonable to assume that. But, you know, I’m pretty confident that these application totals are only going to increase. I mean, it may be only in a matter of years, a few years, in which we see 80,000 people applying to the University of Texas. So, you know, I think the people that are going to be most impacted by this are those that are falling outside of the top 10% of their high school class. You know, these are the people that you know may not have the best stats. They may not be valedictorian, salutatorian, things of this. And I think that the farther outside of 5% you fall, the more competitive it’s going to be. And I also want to point out that that 25% of those that are going to be evaluated holistically — this is the range of the University of Texas is actually making room for here, so that those auto admits don’t take all the room. That also includes international applicants, out-of-state applicants, transfer applicants. So there’s just not a lot of space at the University of Texas for folks these days.
Rush: I see. So UT, as you’ve just spelled out, is doing this because so many desire to come to the University of Texas, so they’ve had to alter that system. Do you see this as a UT specific problem, or is this happening at other colleges, too?
Price: You know, that’s a really good question, and what we do see is that more students are applying to more colleges than ever before, and the more selective schools are only becoming even more selective. I think this is so important that parents kind of hamper down a little bit on this hyper hysteria to get admitted into specific colleges and universities. That they remind all of their teenagers that it’s not the name of the university that’s going to make you a success. It is how you school that will make you a success. And teenagers need to apply to a balanced college list of schools. So let’s not obsess over a short list of the same colleges, and let’s get excited and motivated about all universities.
Rush: That is great advice, actually. I mean, it may be a hard pill to swallow for those who have their heart set on it, but it is true. I mean, there are tons of fantastic universities out there. Final question: this keeps happening and more and more demand is coming. Where does it end? Do you ever see UT only accepting 1% or would there be another tact that they may take to try to equalize?
Price: That’s another fair question. And you know, this all boils down to the state law and with Texas and how they are managing their admissions departments, who knows? I mean, in a number of years, it could come down to top 4%. It wasn’t that long ago that they had to accept the top 10% of the incoming class. So you know, again, this is only getting lower and lower.