What You'll Actually Pay
Price after grants
$12,553 to $30,082 a year for in-state students, depending on income.
College Scorecard 2024 estimate · in-state rates
See the price at your income ↑Sticker price
Full cost before aid: $31,247 a year in-state. Average need-based aid package: $18,299.Aid and debt
38%
receive need-based grants
$20,429
average debt at graduation
Not reported by this school: merit aid.
Getting In
A note for out-of-state applicants
The University of Texas at Austin is subject to a Texas law that limits out-of-state undergraduate enrollment specifically at this school, tied to how it admits in-state applicants through automatic admission. If you're applying from outside Texas, this narrows the seats available to you in a way the admit rate above doesn't show.
Key dates
Test scores
SAT, middle 50% by section: Reading 630–740 · Math 620–770. No combined range is published.
ACT, middle 50% of those who submitted: 27–33. The school doesn't say what share of the class submitted.
ACT range and SAT range from College Scorecard (2024) — not reported in UT Austin's 2025–26 Common Data Set.
What they value
- Considered
- Course rigor (AP/IB)
- Class rank
- GPA
- SAT/ACT scores
- Personal essay
- Recommendations
- Extracurriculars
- Special talent
- Character
- First-gen status
- Where you're from
- In-state residency
- Volunteer work
- Work experience
- Not considered
- Legacy status
- Demonstrated interest
What this means for you
UT Austin doesn't consider demonstrated interest in admissions at all — visits and follow-up emails won't move the needle here.
Source: Common Data Set 2025–26, Section C7 (admissions factors)
UT Austin just showed you what it values in an application. Use that to write a Why-UT Austin essay that's actually about you — not a template.
Get sourced starting points for your essayStudent Life
40.7% of UT Austin classes have fewer than 20 students.
40.7%
under 20 students
38.8%
20 to 49
20.5%
50 or more
Every class section counts, labs and seminars included; first-year courses tend to be larger. UT Austin CDS 2025–26, I-3.
22:1
student:faculty ratio
Campus life
7.7%
first-years from out of state
17%
live on campus
13%
of men in fraternities
17%
of women in sororities
Who attends
- White29.3%
- Hispanic28.4%
- Asian26%
- Black4.6%
- Multiracial4.1%
- Unknown / other3.2%
Enrolled undergraduates; international students are counted separately and not included. UT Austin CDS 2025–26, B2.
Popular majors
Will They Graduate?
74.5% of UT Austin students graduate in 4 years.
74.5%
finish in 4 years
Entered fall 2019
89.2%
finish in 6 years
Entered fall 2019
97.1%
return after first year
Finishing late means paying for extra semesters, so the 4-year rate is the one that shows the cost.
Students with Pell Grants
84% finish in 6 years, against 89.2% of all students.
A 5.2-point gap: Pell Grant students finish less often than students overall.
City & Culture
Beyond the data — what it's actually like to spend four years in Austin.
The campus sits directly north of downtown Austin — the Texas Capitol is under a mile from the South Mall and a comfortable walk — so the city isn't somewhere students drive to at the weekend, it's the next block.
MoreLess
West Campus, immediately west of the university, is where most students end up living after their first year: a dense grid of apartment towers and fraternity houses within walking distance of class, and the rent reflects the location. What the city itself offers is live music and the outdoors — the Red River and Sixth Street venues, ACL and SXSW, and Barton Springs and the Lady Bird Lake trail inside the city limits. Two trade-offs are real and worth pricing in: Austin has grown fast enough that it is no longer a cheap Texas city, and the summer is punishing — in 2023 the city ran more than forty straight days at or above 100°F.
The City
Major city
Austin, TX
Best For
Notable alumni
Notable Alumni
Michael Dell
Founded what became Dell Technologies in Room 2713 of the Dobie Center dormitory, assembling and selling PC upgrade kits while enrolled as a pre-med freshman. He left at 19 in 1984 to run the company full time and never came back for the degree; he and his wife have since given more than a billion dollars to the university, including the gift that founded its medical school.
Walter Cronkite
The CBS Evening News anchor who took America through the moon landings, Vietnam and Watergate. He enrolled here in 1933 studying political science, economics and journalism, wrote for The Daily Texan and called sports on the campus radio station, and quit in 1935 for a full-time newspaper job in Houston without finishing the degree.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Director of New York's Hayden Planetarium and host of Cosmos, and the most widely heard voice in American science. He took his master's in astronomy at UT Austin in 1983 before finishing his doctorate at Columbia.
Class of 1983
Wes Anderson
Director of Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums and The Grand Budapest Hotel. He took a philosophy degree here in 1991 and worked as a projectionist at the campus's Hogg Memorial Auditorium; he met Owen Wilson as a student, and the two wrote Bottle Rocket together and have collaborated ever since.
Class of 1991
William McRaven
The four-star admiral who commanded the raid that killed Osama bin Laden and later ran the University of Texas System as its chancellor. He took a journalism degree here in 1977 and was commissioned through the campus Naval ROTC unit; his 2014 commencement address here became the book Make Your Bed.
Class of 1977
Alumni selected for name recognition and range of fields. Not from the Common Data Set.
Traditions
Traditions
Gone to Texas
Every new student gathers on the Main Mall in front of the Tower on the night before classes begin — the university's formal welcome, ending with the Tower lit burnt orange and the class's graduating year spelled out in its windows. Commencement is held on the same spot four years later, which is the whole point of the ritual.
The Tower
The 1937 clock tower is the university's public scoreboard. Its 217 window shades are reconfigured to mark academic honours, championships and milestones — lit burnt orange for an achievement, and showing a '1' on all four faces for a national title, a convention running since 1964. It is visible across the city, so what the university is celebrating is never private.
The Eyes of Texas
The alma mater, sung at the close of games and ceremonies. It debuted at a 1903 campus minstrel show almost certainly performed in blackface, and in 2020 athletes, students and alumni pressed the university to retire it. A history committee published a full report in March 2021 and the president kept the song while committing the university to teaching its origins. It is a live argument on this campus, not settled history, and it is worth knowing about before enrolling.
Weekend escapes from Austin
Weekend Escapes
Within driving distance from Austin
San Antonio
1 hour 20 minutesStraight down I-35 — the River Walk, the Alamo and the nearest NBA arena, close enough to be an evening out rather than a trip.
Enchanted Rock and Fredericksburg
1 hour 45 minutesThe standard Hill Country weekend: a pink granite dome you can hike to the summit of in an afternoon, with a German-settled town of wineries and peach stands a short drive south of it.
Houston
2 hours 45 minutesThe nearest very large job market and the state's energy and medical centre; the Gulf beaches are a couple of hours further on.
Getting there and game days
Getting There & Game Days
Nearest airport
Austin-Bergstrom International (AUS)
20 minutes from campus
Flies international — you can start a trip abroad from here.
Pro sports nearby
- Austin FC MLS
- San Antonio Spurs NBA
- Houston Texans NFL
- Houston Astros MLB
Internships and jobs nearby
Career Proximity
Two job markets sit within reach of one campus and they have almost nothing to do with each other. The Texas Capitol is under a mile from the South Mall, which puts legislative, agency and policy work within a walk. The other is hardware: Dell is headquartered in Round Rock just north of the city, Apple's north Austin campus is its largest site anywhere outside Cupertino, Samsung has run a chip fab in northeast Austin for decades, and Tesla's Gigafactory Texas sits next to the airport.
Top Industries Nearby
Major Employers
- Dell Technologies
- Apple
- Samsung Austin Semiconductor
- Tesla
- State of Texas
Downtown Austin — the Capitol is under a mile from the South Mall, about a 15-minute walk
Who thrives here
Who Thrives Here
UT Austin admits 22.2% of applicants and requires the SAT or ACT rather than treating scores as optional, which changes what a student has to prepare for. Its 44,314 undergraduates are overwhelmingly local: 90.5% of the entering class comes from Texas against 7.7% from out of state, so a family outside Texas should read that number before anything else on this page. Campus life runs outward rather than inward — only 17.0% live on campus, and 13% of men and 17% of women join Greek life — which leaves the neighbourhoods around campus and the city itself as the centre of gravity. The outcomes are strong: 97.1% of first-years return, 74.5% finish in four years and 89.2% in six, and graduates carry $20,429 in average debt. The catch is aid. Texas meets 64.9% of demonstrated need, so a family with need should model the gap rather than assume it closes.