Hey! I read your college advice post and noticed that you graduated from UT Austin, which has been my dream school since I can remember. I’m about to be a senior and I was hoping if you could give some tips on how to write a good college essay for UT?
Hey! This is going to get rambly so I apologize now lol.
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First things first, I was ranked 11 in a class of 600 and therefore in the top 7 and 10 percent of my class and was automatically accepted to UT. From what I've heard, they quite literally might've put my application in an accepted pile without reading any of my essays or extracurriculars.
Next, I was a very dreamy high schooler and wanted to go to the Ivy League and become some CDC researcher developing vaccines (this is a way more insane thing to say in 2022 than it was in 2014), but what did I choose to write about in my essay? The school library. I was called my library's mascot. I got to school every morning 2 hours before class to do homework and wait for the library to open. I worked in our "bistro" which was a stockroom where we sold coffee and did homework while I hung out with my friends. I had a stack of mugs and repaired my textbooks in the workroom. My librarian was like a second mother. I was in book club and anime club in the afternoons and decorated with the students for the holidays. I wrote the coziest vignette of community and home that I knew.
At the time, I didn't know that this is exactly what I was looking for in college. I wanted to be surrounded by people I didn't necessarily call friends, but just people who knew what it was like to be one of those in-between kids who didn't do sports, or band, or theatre, but loved to be consumed by stories. I applied to UT as a Biology major with a focus in microbiology and was accepted. I would graduate UT 4 years later as an English major with a certificate in Creative Writing with a focus in Poetry, but I feel like that conclusion would probably make much more sense than biology to anyone who read my essay.
I hope you write with passion and honesty on whatever your topic is and get in with the major you want!
And if you don't trust me, my fave May Gao does essay reviewing cheap or free for less advantaged students: https://www.collabadvising.com/essays
Going to add more about UT below, I swear I loved it, there's just a lot wrong with the way most schools work and I don't want you going in completely blind.
NOTES ON UT
Freshman classes are designed to weed people out of in-demand majors (CRUEL!!! but I was told this on multiple occasions faculty). Intro classes are notoriously difficult for calculus, biology, chemistry, and organic chemistry. You will probably fail your first test. It's okay (my roommate was our high school valedictorian and failed our first chem test and cried all night). I got back to back 32, 33, and 76 on chem tests and barely passed with a D. I survived. Fun Fact: former VP of the school got exclusively Cs in his intro classes.
Pick the major you want the most BUT if you are unsure or may want to double major, choose the major that is the most selective. This includes Comp Sci, any of the communications school, the business school, and engineering. These majors are extremely hard to once you are in and attempt to do an internal transfer. When I was trying to transfer into Moody for film, they told me they only accept 1 internal transfer A YEAR.
This school is a class divide. Coming from a working-class Hispanic family and from a not great public high school, I was absolutely broken by the amount of people with summer houses, no debt, loans, or work-study, who studied abroad multiple semesters, went out every night or even every weekend. If you are not White, Indian, or Asian, you will have to be active to find your people. There are tons of culture groups and clubs, but it's jarring when most of your classes are homogenous just because of who actually gets into UT.
Best of luck and feel free to message me here, twitter, or instagram if you have any other questions!
