UT Decisions Nightmare 1/21/25
The University of Texas at Austin had some problems last week. They were supposed to release their early action results on January 15, which were a part of or all of the 90,562 they reported to have received on December 6, 2024. This is a 24.3% increase from last year’s 72, 885 applications submitted. UT Austin’s application deadline for early action is 10/15 and the deadline for regular decision is 12/1. To be clear, the 90,562 applications were received between 8/1 and 12/1, and the school did not break down the amount of ED vs RD applicants.
In case you haven’t heard, they didn’t make the 1/15 early action release date for many early action applicants. They were able to only release acceptances to around 5,000 students and the rest (85,562 minus the regular decision applicants) were told they would be notified on 2/15, which is the RD notification date. (UT did not use the word ‘defer’ until the 16th).
This begs the question: UT Austin had 3 months (minus the holidays?) to review however many tens of thousands of applications that came in by October 15, and now they are supposed to handle the remaining 85,562 in a month?
Have they brought in more applications readers? A 10 minute check of LinkedIn had a repost of job listing to answer calls, emails, etc for the undergraduate admissions department. So it seems that they’re down at least one person.
I don’t know if they are lacking more people or what could’ve happened to drop the ball this badly. Here are some thoughts for improvement:
Make the gap between EA and RD at least 3 months for both application deadlines and decision releases. (University of Michigan)
Stagger decision releases for in-state vs. out of state (Georgia Tech)
Filter in-state auto admits and process separately.
It needs to get out that auto admits must be 75% of the admitted students, leaving 25% for the rest of Texas and out of state. And, that actual admit rate for last year was 11%, so about the same as USC, Cornell, or Boston University.
Pretty elite.