Thousands of aspiring Longhorns marked their calendars for Jan. 15 — a make or break day for whether they’d receive what these days feels like a golden ticket to the Forty Acres. But when opening their MyStatus portal expecting digital confetti falling from the top of their screens, or the dreaded rejection, instead, many got something that felt worse: a deferral. 

Promised as the planned release date for the University of Texas’ first-ever round of early action decisions, an initial notice said the Office of Admissions needed until Feb. 15, the notification date for regular decisions, due to such a large volume of applications. Thousands of disappointed applicants and a few other hundred thousand curious bystanders flocked to TikTok for answers. 

“What’s happening with UT?!?!,” Alexis White, founder and CEO of Alexis College Expert, captioned her video. “Guys, this just goes to show you that college admissions is crazy… This is part of ‘We just gotta roll with it.’” 

The university undoubtedly felt the pressure, but with good reason. For the third consecutive year, UT Austin broke its record for freshman applicants, receiving over 90,000 applications for Fall 2025 admission. Applications rose 24.3%, up from just under 73,000 applicants last year. 

“Our applications provide evidence that more people around the country are realizing that we offer an unparalleled combination of academic excellence, affordability, opportunity and campus experience,” then-UT President Jay Hartzell said in a press release touting the increase. 

In comparison, the University of California, Los Angeles, carries the mantle as one of the most applied-to institutions, with approximately 140,000 applications. Despite receiving a bump post-pandemic, UCLA’s applications remained steady over the past few cycles, whereas UT continues seeing dramatic increases, now hovering closer to the volume of applicants seen by New York University and Northeastern University. White said the University of Michigan proved you can have it all with academic prestige and athletics — but you can in Texas, too, it’ll just be a bit warmer. 

But what’s really behind such a skyrocketing interest in UT, particularly across the country? While in-state applications rose 12%, out-of-state applicants jumped 48%. UT credits its stature as the seventh-best among American public universities, according to U.S. News & World Report, or even its top-ranked advertising program at the Moody College of Communication. 

“With social media and football, people get really swept up,” said White, who’s amassed nearly 3 million likes on TikTok. “The other thing, too, though, is that Texas residents are really gambling on either direct admission to UT, or essentially, I'll call it indirect admission (Coordinated Admission Program or CAP), where they go to another UT school, and then they transfer at year two. I had about five Texas residents this year who were very strong students — cool, quirky and talented and all the things. But that was as good as it was going to get for them. It's the combination of people wanting the rah-rah with the prestige, and UT checks that box.” 

White started coaching students on college admissions over two decades ago after graduating from UCLA and works with students to make their path to college a reality. She boasts getting students into Ivy League schools and now includes Texas in that category. She said her TikTok helps level the playing field, becoming a destination for students scouring the Internet for admissions scoops. Similarly, she said the app helped demystify schools otherwise seen to some as unattainable. 

“Bama Rush and the trickle down of all of the sorority videos became real clickbaity for everybody. The minute you started following those people, your algorithm became all the colleges that do that stuff,” White said. “But (videos like) ‘Come with me as I spend the day getting ready for midterms,’ or ‘Get ready with me for my blah, blah, blah’ became the way the TikTok algorithm works. Watching those videos made the schools feel accessible. It made students feel like, ‘Oh, I look like him,’ or ‘I look like her, I like those things, and I want a city, or a campus that looks like that,’ or ‘Everyone looks like they're having so much fun.’ It's just a great commercial.” 

The advertising might hook prospective students, but whether they can in turn hook schools like UT continues to grow increasingly difficult. Kevin Martin, founder of Tex Admissions, a service specialized in advising students applying to UT, estimates the out-of-state admission rate to be around 5%, possibly the most selective in the nation. Martin, a Texas Ex and UT admissions counselor from 2011 to 2013, put his expertise to paper in 2017 when he published his 322-page book, “Your Ticket to the Forty Acres: The Unofficial Guide for UT Undergraduate Admissions.” 

“There's so many blogs and TikToks that say, ‘Here's the secrets,’” said Martin, who also has a YouTube channel with over 700,000 views. “It’s like, no, you have to be academically excellent. You have to have a strong resume that fits your major. You need to write decent essays, and you need to get really lucky. Luck and unluck are the two sides of the same coin that families underestimate because they try and have an after-the-fact diagnosis of ‘Why did this kid get in and my son didn’t,’ and it's a dead end.”

As people desperately look for ways to stand out, whether it’s becoming a CEO at 17 or joining countless major-related organizations, White said showing your passions can’t hurt. 

“If you're the kind of kid who at a young age, the parents were always like, ‘Oh my god, I'm just gonna have her do my whole marketing campaign, she has such great ideas.’ Those are the kinds of things where we see that window for the kid — it’s like, “OK, you’re passionate about this,’” White said. “So let's keep doing the things that are interesting. Can you be a social media intern for any of these social media companies? Do you want to start exploring having your own social media platform? But it has to be real.” 

Still, it might not be enough. 

“Do I think that that's going to get you into UT? No, I have a million kids who are totally normal and just have really good grades, and they've taken all the courses that fit their major of interest, and they've done the extracurriculars,” White said. “When you have the academic chops that go along with that, then you are a good candidate. However, there is zero guarantee.” 

For Texan applicants seeking regular admission, it’s an equally uphill battle, particularly with the threshold for automatic acceptance dropping for Fall 2026 from top 6% to 5%. 

“It's a reach for everyone,” White said. “There's not one college counselor that's going to look at a kid for UT and be like, ‘Oh yeah, that's gonna happen.’” 

Although UT always carried prestige as the state’s flagship public school, grandparents and parents who imagined future generations carrying on their Longhorn legacies are grappling with the changing dynamics. UT did not begin accepting significantly more or less students overnight, but the demand for a relatively stagnant number of seats surged. 

In 2001, UT received around 21,000 applications, according to Martin. By 2011, that only increased to over 32,000. Compare that to roughly 60,000 post-pandemic for Fall 2022 and now breaking 90,000 just a few years later. Martin also credits rising applications to the broader trend of Gen Z students applying to three times as many schools as their Gen X parents. Additionally, Martin said UT grew increasingly popular among Texans since the passage of SB 175 in 2009, a law capping auto-admits to 75% of UT’s enrollment. 

While Martin cautions against characterizing this year’s admissions cycle as wildly different than that of one’s older sibling just a few years ago, he noted undeniable generational differences. 

“What's changed from this year to last? Not much,” he said. “But what's changed between now and pre-COVID? Quite a lot.” 

If you’ve made it to this point of the story, it’s clear you’re looking to crack the code of how to get in. But even Martin, who worked on the inside, didn’t always know the answers. 

“Students and families see (admissions) as these omniscient gods — like flawless entities that always get it right and never get it wrong,” he said. “They're more like umpires calling balls and strikes — sometimes they get it right, and sometimes they don't. When I worked at UT, you see what very human institutions these are. At least back then, there was a bunch that we didn't know and couldn't know, which is very frustrating for families, because they see you wear the shirt or stand behind the table, and you are the symbol of the institution. It leaves a big gap between what the public wants to know versus what is out there.” 

For Sarah Xu, a first-generation student from Frisco, UT felt like the gold standard. Her older sister found success on the Forty and moved to New York City to begin her career post-graduation. For Asian families in North Texas, Xu said the glitz and glam of UT meant everything. But then in spring 2020, just before the world shut down, she received the decision she dreaded — not a straight yes or no, but admission to CAP. Would she chase her dream of studying advertising in Austin — a place she called her “endgame,” since location plays a huge role in her mental health — or would she go to another school from the get-go, where she’d be home from day one?

CAP offers guaranteed admission into the College of Liberal Arts (other majors may be more selective) at UT Austin as a sophomore, given successful completion of the program. 

Despite the prospect of missing out on going to Dirty Sixth, which even the pandemic couldn’t stop, Xu ultimately chose to attend UT Arlington for a year, with her sights set on making it to the Stan Richards School of Advertising & Public Relations. 

“Asking if it was worth it for me to go into CAP rather than going to the University of North Texas, or another four-year university, was that long-term thinking,” she said. “It was a no-brainer that graduating from UT, specifically in advertising, had a lot of upsides for what I wanted to do in the future.” 

Sure, she faced a little FOMO. But with letters of recommendation, strategically taking classes like sociology that most closely matched her dream major and cruising to a 4.0, Xu ended up exactly where she’d hoped. She took campus by storm, joining Communication Council and even writing for Moody Magazine. She later studied abroad in London and completed the UTLA program before landing in the Big Apple, where she now works for L'Oreal on digital content. 

To those who set their hopes on being a Longhorn and face the same dilemma, Xu, who continues offering advice to prospective students on TikTok, advises zooming out. 

“One decision doesn't change the course of your life, but it can open the right choice,” she said. “I had nobody to look to from afar, and I was shooting in the dark, and I’m glad it turned out great. It’s very niche for Texas, but it’s not niche at all, because thousands of Texans go through it every single year. This is such a big juncture in someone’s life. Because I had a positive experience, I want to share this so that maybe it makes things a little less scary.”

While Xu calls herself lucky, the numbers don’t lie, and not everyone will be as fortunate, particularly with no signs of applications declining anytime soon. 

There’s no telling how many more students could apply to UT next cycle, but White predicts the bigger sea change in admissions could come with where else students start applying en masse. She mentions Oklahoma, Missouri, Iowa and Kansas as schools she expects to see creep up. 

“People are going, ‘I can’t get into Kelly (School of Business) in Indiana. Am I going to start looking elsewhere?’” White said. “Guys, let's expand our repertoire. We are acting like there are only 12 schools in this country — it's obscene. Just because something has a high acceptance rate does not mean that it's not a good school.” 

Even so, when someone envisions themselves walking Speedway, wearing burnt orange, going for a swim at Barton Springs on a random Tuesday and going down the street to see Chappell Roan at Zilker Park, giving up on that dream feels defeating and equally daunting. A perfect storm of interest keeps Austin and UT in the mix for years to come. 

“Nobody complains. Nobody goes there and leaves. So they're doing something right,” White said. “There's something for everyone. But I want people to apply knowing what the boundaries are.”