![]() Special Circumstances: Please share background on events or special circumstances that you feel may have impacted your high school academic performance, including the possible effects of COVID-19. Leadership/Diversity: Describe how your experiences, perspectives, talents, and/or your involvement in leadership activities (at your school, job, community, or within your family) will help you to make an impact both in and out of the classroom while enrolled at UT.Ĭhange the World: The core purpose of The University of Texas at Austin is, "To Transform Lives for the Benefit of Society." Please share how you believe your experience at UT-Austin will prepare you to “Change the World” after you graduate. Major: Why are you interested in the major you indicated as your first-choice major? ![]() In this post, I share some initial thoughts on the new topics, I provide tips for the Change the World essay, and I offer eight examples that could work for this new prompt.Ĭheck out my new book Surviving the College Admissions Madness and Youtube Channel Fall 2022 UT-Austin Required Short Answer Questions In my new book Surviving the College Admissions Madness, I argue that elite universities do not care about you. UT-Austin admissions outcomes are bound to be even more unfair and inexplicable than usual. If UT and other elite universities were sincere about diversity recruitment, they would simplify their essay requirements.Īdmissions reviewers were already behind with reading and scoring applications last year, and it’s almost certain that this new change will disrupt their bureaucracy and add even more inconsistency to the review process. Changing essay requirements directly harms diversity recruitment and creating a more inclusive campus. Inevitably, the lowest-income or most poorly resourced schools suffer the most during policy changes. New topics require retraining staff on a new topic where they won’t have any examples.Įach time a university changes their policies, hundreds of high school college advisors and counselors must adjust themselves. Changing topics is like when a restaurant changes their menus. There was absolutely nothing wrong with the previous essay topics, and I see no upside in changing them. I have no doubt many thousands of students had already started and perhaps completed their essays. I share my initial frustrations in this video. These late changes are typical for UT Admissions’s long tradition of breaking what doesn’t need to be fixed. UT without explanation and past their July 1 promise to release the topics has unveiled four new required short answers without emailing either high school counselors or prospective applicants on their mailing list. There are no alternatives in the way that UC Berkeley competes with UC Los Angeles or the other research campuses. They can get away with their excesses because they know the public is too timid to push back. It saddens me that my alma mater is so out of touch with society. UT-Austin is unreliable, and elite universities everywhere are not interested in being transparent or accountable to the tax-paying public. One of the many ways that college admissions is rife with uncertainty, doubt, and anxiety is a direct result of inconsistent admissions policies and arbitrary changes. If this is your first time dealing with UT-Austin admissions, buckle up. Much of my job as a counselor was answering for screw-ups and haphazard policy changes orchestrated by senior staff and enrollment managers who seem to love kicking own goals. When I worked for UT-Austin, they released PACE decisions without informing counselors like me that it was a new program. In 2019, they added a fourth short answer in early August and then removed it after a week without explanation, and after hundreds of students had already applied. They randomly admitted previously rejected students over the summer of 2020 without explanation. Their appeals process is a black box that amounts to a lottery than anything specific to individual students. It’s a glorified sales position masquerading as “access” and “inclusion.” Starting in 2013, the Office of Admissions has shifted their priorities from informing the public to persuading students to apply and enroll. In 2021 alone, they canceled many international applications without explanation, they were late releasing applications for transfers, and they always fail to adequately communicate to the public when decisions will be released. Let me tell you how I really feel because somebodies got to do it, and I know thousands of people and educators will share my frustrations. The application hasn’t even opened as of writing July 10, and they’re already off to a poor start. Not an admissions cycle goes by that UT doesn’t kick the ball into its own net.
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