What Admissions Officers Actually See
Your child's GPA and test score open the door. Here's what admissions officers are actually evaluating on the other side of it.
What Admissions Officers Actually See
Your child's transcript starts the conversation. Their application has to finish it.
Think of every college application as an iceberg. What most families spend all their time on sits above the waterline. The part that decides the outcome is below it.
It's a fair question. And the answer isn't that grades and scores don't matter. They do. They're the price of admission to the conversation. But at most competitive colleges, the conversation doesn't end there.
Here's what's actually happening on the other side of the application.
The iceberg model
Think of every application as an iceberg. The tip, GPA, course rigor, test scores, is what gets your child's file picked up. Every applicant in a competitive pool has something there. It's the floor, not the ceiling.
Below the waterline is where the actual decision happens. That's where admissions officers spend most of their time, reading essays, reviewing activities, weighing recommendations, and asking whether this student's application speaks to this school in a way that feels specific, not generic.
The families who understand this early are the ones who spend junior year building that layer, not cramming for another practice test. For a deeper look at how one test-optional school weighs scores, see our breakdown of whether to submit a test score to Michigan .
"A compelling story from a 1280 will outperform a flat application from a 1400. Every time."
The three questions every reader asks
When an admissions officer reads your child's application, they're trying to answer three things:
The subjective layer: what actually moves the needle
Below the waterline, these are the components that determine outcomes in close decisions:
This applies everywhere, not just test-optional schools
One thing families often assume is that if a school reinstated test requirements, scores must be driving the decision. That's not how it works. Schools like Harvard, Georgetown, Cornell, and UT Austin all require scores, and all read every essay, weigh every recommendation, and evaluate whether each applicant's story fits the school they're applying to.
A test score gets your child's file opened. It doesn't get them in. That's true whether the school is test-optional or test-required, whether the acceptance rate is single digits or fifty percent.
The application layer is where this gets decided. And that layer takes time to build.
"The work starts now. Not in August."
If your child is a junior and hasn't started thinking about their story, their essays, or their activities narrative, this is the moment to start.
Test-Optional at A&M. Here's What the Data Shows.
Texas A&M is test-optional. But 79% of enrolled freshmen submitted SAT scores. Here's what that means for your child's application strategy.
Test-Optional at A&M.
Here's What the Data Shows.
Most families assume test-optional means scores don't matter. The numbers tell a different story, and understanding them is the first step toward a smarter application strategy.
Texas A&M University is test-optional. No SAT or ACT score is required for freshman applicants. That's official policy, confirmed on the admissions.tamu.edu website. But if your family is using that fact as the foundation of your A&M strategy, you may be missing something important.
At Green College Admissions , I work with families across the DFW area and nationwide who are navigating the college application process. One of the most common misconceptions I see is the belief that test-optional means scores are irrelevant. At A&M, the data suggests otherwise.
What the Enrollment Data Actually Shows
According to the Texas A&M Common Data Set 2024-2025 and IPEDS, 79% of enrolled freshmen submitted SAT scores . Another 21% submitted ACT scores. That means the vast majority of students who enrolled at A&M chose to send a score, even though they weren't required to.
CDS 2024-2025 / IPEDS
This doesn't mean your child is penalized for not submitting. A&M's policy is clear: no score is required, and the university states test scores are "considered" when submitted, not required. But the pool your child is competing against looked very different from what many families expect.
Score Ranges of Enrolled Students
Among the students who did submit scores, here is where they landed. These are middle 50% ranges, meaning 25% of students scored below the lower number and 25% scored above the higher number.
| Test | 25th Percentile | 75th Percentile | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| SAT Composite | 1161 | 1383 | ABPA Fall 2024 |
| ACT Composite | 25 | 32 | ABPA Fall 2024 |
Source: Texas A&M Academic and Business Performance Analytics (ABPA), Fall 2024 enrolled first-time full-time students.
These are benchmarks worth knowing. If your child's score falls comfortably within or above this range, submitting it is likely a net positive. If it falls below, that's not disqualifying, but it does shift the weight onto the rest of the application.
"Test-optional doesn't mean scores are unimportant. It means the rest of your application has to carry more weight when you don't submit one."
What A&M Actually Weighs
The CDS Section C7 tells you what Texas A&M considers "very important" in its admissions decisions. Three factors sit at the top: rigor of coursework, class rank, and academic GPA. Test scores are listed as "considered," which places them below these three criteria in the official framework.
| Factor | A&M Weight |
|---|---|
| Rigor of coursework | Very Important |
| Class rank | Very Important |
| Academic GPA | Very Important |
| Standardized test scores | Considered |
Source: Texas A&M Common Data Set 2024-2025, Section C7.
This is where the strategy conversation gets important. For students in the top 10% of their Texas high school class, A&M offers automatic admission. But for everyone else, the application is evaluated holistically, and that evaluation extends well beyond the score question.
The Score Decision Is Just the Beginning
Whether your child submits a score or not, the rest of the application still needs to be built carefully. Essays, activities, demonstrated interest, and the overall story your child tells, these are the elements that differentiate applications in a pool of over 89,000 applicants with a 51% admit rate that continues to tighten.
89,422 applicants. 45,866 admitted. 20,725 enrolled. Admit rate: 51.3%. A school this size, with this many applicants, is not a safety for most students. Source: ABPA Fall 2025.
Most families I work with are surprised when they see these numbers. A&M has grown significantly in competitiveness. The families who navigate it well are the ones who understand both the data and the full application picture, and who build a strategy around both.
If your family is beginning to think through an A&M application and you want to understand what a strong application actually looks like beyond the score decision, that's the conversation I specialize in. You can learn more or reach out through the link below.
Green College Admissions · Keller, TX
Should Your Child Submit a Standardized Test Score to Michigan?
Michigan went test-optional in 2024. Here's what the published score ranges actually mean, what they leave out, and how to make the right submission decision for your child.
Should Your Child Submit a Standardized Test Score to Michigan?
Michigan went test-optional in 2024. Only half of applicants submitted scores. Here is what the data actually means and how to make a decision that helps, not hurts.
At Green College Admissions, we work with families navigating exactly these decisions. After operating under a test-flexible policy since 2020, the University of Michigan formally adopted a permanent test-optional policy in February 2024, effective for students entering Winter 2025 and beyond. For the first full cycle under that policy, just over half of applicants chose to submit a standardized test score. That number, 51%, tells you something important, but probably not what you think it does.
This post is not a list of score cutoffs. Michigan does not publish cutoffs, and anyone who gives you a single number and calls it a threshold is overstating what the data can actually tell you. What this post does instead is explain what the published score ranges mean, what they leave out, and how to think about the submission decision in a way that actually helps your child's application.
Sources: U-M Office of Budget and Planning First-Year Class Profile, Fall 2024 and 2025; 2024-25 Common Data Set.
What the Published Numbers Show
Michigan's Office of Budget and Planning publishes a detailed first-year class profile each fall. For the Fall 2024 enrolled class, here is what the score data shows for students who chose to submit:
| Test | Middle 50% Range | Submission Rate |
|---|---|---|
| SAT Total | 1360 to 1530 | 51% of enrolled class |
| ACT Composite | 31 to 34 | 18% of enrolled class |
| GPA | 3.9 to 4.0 | Average enrolled student |
Source: U-M First-Year Class Profile, Fall 2024 enrolled class, obp.umich.edu. Score ranges reflect enrolled students who submitted scores only.
At first glance, these numbers look like a benchmark. A 1360 SAT or a 31 ACT is the 25th percentile floor for submitted scores. That is useful context. But reading those numbers as a submission threshold misses something critical about how this data was generated.
What the Numbers Do Not Show
The published score ranges reflect enrolled students who chose to submit. Students who submitted strong scores but enrolled elsewhere are not in this data. Neither are admitted students who chose not to submit scores at all.
That distinction matters enormously. The 51% of enrolled students who submitted scores were a self-selected group. High scorers are more likely to submit their scores, because submitting a strong score is a rational application decision. The result is that the published middle 50% range skews upward relative to the full admitted class.
Layer on top of that: students who scored above 1530 and were admitted to Michigan but chose to enroll at a different school are also absent from this data. Michigan's published ranges describe a very specific population: students who applied, were admitted, chose to enroll, and chose to submit scores. That is not the same as the full picture of who Michigan admits, and it is certainly not a complete picture of who gets in.
- Enrolled submitters only. The ranges reflect students who submitted a score and chose Michigan. Students admitted with strong scores who enrolled at peer schools are not in this data.
- Self-selected pool. High scorers are more likely to submit. The full admitted class includes non-submitters whose scores are invisible in Michigan's published data.
- Context, not a cutoff. Michigan publishes no score threshold. These numbers describe who showed up, not who got in, and not what your child should do.
What Michigan Actually Says About Test Scores
Michigan's test-optional policy is genuine, not performative. The university rates standardized test scores as "Important" in its Common Data Set, one tier below GPA and course rigor, which are rated "Very Important." Students who do not submit scores will not be penalized. Michigan's admissions office has stated that applications are reviewed holistically regardless of whether a score is present.
That said, Michigan is not test-blind. Submitted scores are considered in context. A strong score from a student at a school with limited AP offerings reads differently than the same score from a student at a highly resourced school with a full slate of rigorous courses. Admissions officers are trained to evaluate numbers in context, and that context includes everything else in your child's file. If you want to go deeper on how holistic review works at Texas's flagship schools, our post on holistic admissions strategy at UT Austin and Texas A&M covers the same framework in detail.
How to Actually Think About This Decision
Rather than anchoring to a specific number, there are three questions worth working through before your child decides whether to submit:
Does the score help tell the story?
A strong score confirms something the rest of the application already suggests: that your child can handle rigorous academic work at a competitive university. If the score is consistent with the academic record, it reinforces the narrative. If it is significantly below the rest of the profile, it may raise questions the application does not answer.
Is the score within range of enrolled submitters?
At or above 1360 SAT or 31 ACT, your child's score is within the range of students who submitted and enrolled. Below that, the score is below the 25th percentile of a self-selected pool of already-strong submitters. That does not mean it hurts automatically, but it shifts the calculus. A score well below the range adds less than the absence of a score in most cases.
What does the rest of the application look like?
Test-optional works best when the application has something else to carry it. For a deeper look at what that means in practice, see our post on building a competitive test-optional application. Exceptional essays, meaningful activities, demonstrated impact, and strong teacher recommendations are what fill the space a score might otherwise occupy. If those elements are strong, the absence of a score is less consequential. If those elements are thin, submitting a competitive score provides a useful data point for the reader.
The Bottom Line
Michigan's published score ranges are a starting point, not a verdict. They reflect a narrow slice of the applicant pool, filtered three times over, and they do not capture the full range of students Michigan admits each year. A student with a 1320 who does not submit scores is not disqualified. A student with a 1400 who submits is not guaranteed anything.
What the data does tell you is this: Michigan is a 16% school with 109,000 applicants and a genuinely holistic review process. Every piece of the application matters. The score decision is one part of a larger strategy, and it deserves more thought than a single number can provide.
Beyond the Numbers: How UT Austin and Texas A&M Actually Evaluate Your Application
For students outside the auto-admit threshold at UT Austin and Texas A&M, the holistic parts of the application aren't optional. Here's what they are and why they matter.
If your child is applying to UT Austin or Texas A&M, GPA and class rank are probably at the center of your planning. They should be. But for a large portion of Texas applicants, those numbers are only part of the story. Once a student falls outside the automatic admission threshold, the application becomes something different entirely. It becomes a holistic review, and that is where strategy makes the difference.
The Auto-Admit Threshold: A Floor, Not a Plan
Both schools operate under Texas's automatic admission law, but the cutoffs are not the same.
UT Austin automatically admits Texas residents who graduate in the top 5% of their high school class. That cutoff has tightened in recent cycles as application volume has surged. UT received over 90,000 freshman applications for fall 2025. The number of seats has not kept pace. Here's a deeper look at what UT's acceptance rate actually means for Texas families.
Texas A&M automatically admits Texas residents in the top 10% of their graduating class. The university's headline acceptance rate is approximately 51%, but that figure is shaped significantly by auto-admits and does not reflect what the process looks like for students going through holistic review. For out-of-state applicants, there is no automatic path at all. If your family is applying from outside Texas, this post covers what OOS families actually need to know about A&M admissions.
For students just outside either cutoff, strong numbers still matter. But they are no longer enough on their own. That is where the holistic parts of the application take over.
What Holistic Review Actually Means
Your numbers get you noticed. Your story gets you in.
When admissions officers at UT or A&M move into holistic review, they are reading the full application. GPA and test scores are already in the file. What they are looking for now is the person behind those numbers. Four components carry the most weight in that evaluation.
The Cost of a Numbers-Only Application
A student with a strong GPA and competitive test scores who submits a numbers-heavy application with no compelling narrative is one of the most common patterns behind students who end up with CAP at UT or an outright denial at A&M. It is not that their numbers were wrong. It is that the holistic parts of the application did not do any work.
CAP postpones admission to UT's main campus for one year. It is not a rejection, but it is not what a student who earned a 4.0 and a competitive SAT planned on when they applied. And it is often avoidable with the right approach. The holistic parts of the application are not optional. For students outside the auto-admit threshold, they are the deciding factor.
How Green College Admissions Can Help
This is exactly the work we do at Green College Admissions. We work with students and families on the parts of the application that numbers alone can't represent: the personal statement, supplemental responses, activities section, and honors. The goal is an application that tells a coherent, authentic story, one that makes your child memorable to an admissions officer who has read thousands of files just like theirs.
We serve DFW families in person and students nationwide virtually. If UT Austin or Texas A&M is on your child's list and they are a junior or senior, now is the right time to be strategic about it.
Let's build the story.
Independent college admissions consulting for families who want more than a checklist. Serving DFW in person and students nationwide virtually.
View our services →What Out-of-State Families Need to Know Before Applying to UT Austin
Texas law reserves 90% of UT Austin's freshman class for Texas residents, and automatic admission fills roughly 75% of the class before holistic review begins. Here is what that means for out-of-state families.
What Out-of-State Families Need to Know Before Applying to UT Austin
The published acceptance rate is 26.6%. That number is real. It is also misleading for families outside of Texas.
Every year, families across the country set their sights on The University of Texas at Austin. It is a flagship institution with a strong national reputation, programs that rank among the best in the country, and an acceptance rate that, on the surface, looks reasonable. At 26.6% for the Class of 2028, UT Austin appears to be a selective but attainable reach school for a strong out-of-state applicant.
That reading is incomplete. And for out-of-state families, the gap between the published number and the actual competitive landscape is significant enough to change how you approach the application entirely.
Texas Law Sets the Table Before Holistic Review Even Begins
Texas Education Code Section 51.803 requires that at least 90% of UT Austin's enrolled freshman class be Texas residents. This is not a preference or a policy that admissions officers apply with discretion. It is state law, and it governs the composition of every incoming class.
Within that Texas-resident pool, automatic admission fills approximately 75% of the freshman class before a single application is reviewed holistically. Under House Bill 3041, Texas residents who graduate in the top 5% of their high school class receive guaranteed admission. This threshold applies to Fall 2026 admits and beyond.
Out-of-state applicants compete for what remains after both of those priorities are satisfied. The 26.6% overall acceptance rate does not reflect that reality.
UT Austin does not publish a specific out-of-state acceptance rate, and third-party calculations vary enough that citing a single figure would be misleading. What the structural facts make clear, without any additional calculation, is that out-of-state applicants are competing for a meaningfully smaller share of the class than the headline number suggests.
There Is No Automatic Path for Out-of-State Applicants
The auto-admit pathway is exclusively available to Texas residents. Regardless of class rank, GPA, or test scores, every out-of-state application goes through individualized holistic review. A student graduating first in their class from an out-of-state high school receives the same process as every other non-Texas applicant. There are no exceptions.
This matters because many families approach UT Austin the way they approach other flagship schools, assuming that exceptional academic credentials create a kind of threshold above which admission becomes likely. At UT Austin, for out-of-state applicants, that assumption does not hold. Strong credentials are necessary but not sufficient. The process is genuinely holistic, and every element of the application carries weight.
What Holistic Review Actually Considers
For out-of-state applicants, the following factors shape the decision:
- Essays carry significant weight. Two are required, one is optional via the Common App. For out-of-state applicants without the built-in advantage of residency, the essays are often where the case for admission is made or lost.
- SAT/ACT scores are required. UT Austin is not test-optional. This is a meaningful distinction from many peer institutions, and families should plan accordingly.
- Rigor of coursework, class rank, and grades all factor into the review.
- A resume and letters of recommendation are optional, but submitting strong supporting materials is worth the effort.
No admissions interviews. UT Austin does not offer interviews for undergraduate admission. There is no opportunity to make a personal impression outside of the written application.
Demonstrated interest is not considered. Visiting campus, attending information sessions, and emailing admissions officers are common strategies at schools that track demonstrated interest. UT Austin explicitly does not consider it. Those efforts will not improve your child's chances.
What this means practically: everything that determines admission must live in the application itself. The essays, the transcript, the test scores, and the supporting materials are the entire record. There are no supplementary signals, no soft factors to compensate for a weaker area, and no relationship to build with admissions over time.
Your Child Is Applying to a College, Not Just a University
At UT Austin, admission decisions are made at the level of the specific college and major your child applies to, not at the university level. This distinction matters more than most families realize when they are building their strategy.
Two programs draw particularly heavy out-of-state interest and carry the highest degree of selectivity: the McCombs School of Business and the Cockrell School of Engineering. Both are nationally ranked programs, both attract a large volume of competitive out-of-state applications, and both carry differential tuition on top of the already-higher non-resident base rate. Out-of-state students admitted to McCombs or Cockrell pay more than out-of-state students in other colleges within UT Austin.
Choosing one of these programs without understanding how that choice affects the competitive landscape is one of the most common strategic mistakes out-of-state families make. Applying to a high-demand major with a strong but not exceptional profile, when a lower-demand program might have been a better fit, is a pattern that costs students admission every cycle.
The Cost Reality Most Families Are Not Prepared For
Even for families who have thought carefully about cost, the gap between in-state and out-of-state expenses at UT Austin is larger than most expect when the full cost of attendance is calculated over four years.
| In-State | Out-of-State | |
|---|---|---|
| Tuition & Fees | $11,688/yr | $44,908/yr |
| Annual COA (on campus) | ~$32,446/yr | ~$65,666/yr |
| Four-Year COA | ~$129,784 | ~$262,664 |
Source: UT Austin Texas One Stop, 2024-2025 published rates / onestop.utexas.edu
There is an additional variable that families rarely factor in at the planning stage: the Texas legislature's resident tuition freeze applies through 2026-2027, but it does not apply to non-resident students. Out-of-state tuition at UT Austin has increased approximately 5% year over year in recent cycles. The figures shown reflect 2024-2025 published rates. The actual four-year gap for a student enrolling today is likely higher than $132,880.
For families applying to McCombs or Cockrell, both programs also carry a differential tuition charge of $1,100 per semester on top of the standard non-resident rate. That adds approximately $8,800 over four years on top of the premium already shown above.
What This Means for Your Strategy
None of this is an argument against applying to UT Austin. For the right student with the right profile, the right program fit, and a clear-eyed understanding of the financial picture, it can absolutely make sense. What it is an argument against is applying to UT Austin the way you would apply to a school where the published acceptance rate tells the whole story.
Out-of-state applicants who do well at UT Austin tend to share a few things in common. They apply to a program where their profile is genuinely competitive at that college's selectivity level, not just at the university level. Their essays are strong enough to carry real weight in a holistic review where there is no automatic path and no supplementary relationship to lean on. And their families understood the financial picture before the application was submitted, not after an acceptance arrived.
The OOS strategy at UT Austin is different. Building it before you apply is the only way to do it right.
Sports vs. College Prep: Where Should Your Investment Go?
83% of sports parents believe their child will play in college. Only 2% receive an athletic scholarship. Here's what the data says about where your investment should actually go.
Sports vs. College Prep:
Where Should Your Investment Go?
If you have a child playing travel baseball, club soccer, or competitive lacrosse, you already know what it costs. Equipment, team fees, tournament registrations, hotel rooms, flights. For many families, the annual investment runs from $3,000 to $10,000 or more. And most of the time, that investment is made with one eye on college.
The hope is straightforward: if my kid is good enough, sports opens the door. A scholarship, a roster spot, a path forward. It is a reasonable hope. But the data tells a more complicated story, and most families do not see it until it is too late to adjust.
The Gap Between Belief and Reality
According to a New York Life survey, 83% of parents with children in youth sports believe their child has what it takes to compete at the college level. Nearly half believe a scholarship is a realistic outcome. These are not unreasonable parents. They are watching their kids work hard every day, and they believe in them.
But the NCAA tells a different story. Fewer than 7% of high school athletes go on to compete at any college level. Only 2% of all high school athletes receive any form of athletic scholarship. And the sports where families spend the most, baseball, soccer, lacrosse, are among the least funded when it comes to college scholarships.
The gap between what parents believe and what the data shows is not a failure of love. It is a failure of information.
The Numbers by Sport
Not all sports carry the same odds. Here is what the data shows for the most commonly played youth sports in the US, based on NCAA participation reports:
| Sport | High School Athletes | % Who Play in College |
|---|---|---|
| Lacrosse | ~200,000 | 12.8% |
| Baseball | ~490,000 | 7.5% |
| Football | ~1,000,000 | 7.3% |
| Soccer | ~830,000 | 5.6% |
| Basketball | ~540,000 | 3.5% |
Lacrosse has the highest rate of any common sport at 12.8%. That sounds encouraging until you consider that lacrosse is also one of the least-funded sports in college athletics. Most lacrosse programs offer little to no scholarship money. Baseball and soccer follow the same pattern: higher-than-average participation rates at the college level, but minimal financial aid attached to those roster spots.
Football and basketball are where the scholarship money concentrates. But they are also where the competition is most intense and the odds of earning a meaningful scholarship are lowest of all.
What the Sport Cannot Do
Here is what most families do not fully reckon with: even if your child earns a college roster spot, that moment is the outcome of the sport. It is not the beginning of a career, and for the overwhelming majority of student athletes, it is not a financial windfall either.
The college application, on the other hand, is not a single moment. It is the result of four years of intentional work. Grades, course rigor, extracurricular depth, leadership experiences, community involvement, and an essay that articulates who your student actually is. That story does not write itself in senior year. It is built, year by year, starting in 9th grade.
Families who begin positioning their student in 9th and 10th grade arrive at the application with a story to tell. Families who wait until junior or senior year are scrambling to fill gaps that cannot be filled in time.
It Is Not Either/Or. It Is About Priority.
This is not an argument against youth sports. Sports teach discipline, resilience, and teamwork in ways that genuinely matter. Many of the qualities that make a strong college applicant are developed on a field or in a gym.
But there is a difference between supporting your child's athletic development and betting your college strategy on a roster spot that the data suggests is unlikely to materialize. The families who navigate this well are the ones who invest in both, while being clear-eyed about which one has a guaranteed outcome.
A completed, well-positioned college application is a guaranteed deliverable. A college scholarship is not. That distinction matters when you are deciding where your time, energy, and money should go during the high school years.
Where to Go From Here
If your student is in high school right now, the most valuable question you can ask is not "is my child good enough to play in college?" It is "are we building the kind of profile that gives my student the best possible outcome, regardless of what happens with sports?"
That question has a clear answer. And it starts now, not senior year.
Texas A&M Out-of-State Admissions: What OOS Families Actually Need to Know
Out-of-state applicants to Texas A&M play by completely different rules than Texas residents. No auto-admit path. A four-year cost premium of nearly $108,800. A tuition freeze that doesn't apply to them. And a scholarship waiver most OOS families never find. Here is what the admissions page actually says.
Texas A&M Out-of-State Admissions: What OOS Families Actually Need to Know
No auto-admit path. Holistic review only. A cost premium that compounds. And a scholarship waiver most families never find.
The overall acceptance rate at Texas A&M is 51.3%. If your child is applying from out of state, that number tells you almost nothing about their actual situation.
Out-of-state applicants at Texas A&M play by a completely different set of rules than Texas residents. No automatic admission path. A cost structure that differs by more than $100,000 over four years. A tuition freeze that applies to residents but not to them. And a scholarship waiver pathway that most OOS families never find because nobody tells them to look for it.
This post covers everything that matters if your child is applying to Texas A&M from outside of Texas.
The Two-Path Problem
Texas law gives students in the top 10% of their graduating class automatic admission to any Texas public university. For high-achieving Texas residents, this means the admissions question is largely answered before the application is submitted.
Out-of-state applicants do not qualify for this pathway. Regardless of class rank, GPA, or course rigor, every OOS application is reviewed holistically. There are no exceptions.
Every out-of-state application to Texas A&M is reviewed holistically, no exceptions, regardless of class rank or GPA.
This distinction matters because it changes the entire strategic approach. An OOS applicant cannot plan around automatic admission. They have to build an application that earns a seat through holistic review, and that process starts well before senior year.
Source: admissions.tamu.edu/resources/future-students/out-of-state
What Holistic Review Actually Looks At
Texas A&M evaluates OOS applicants across two categories. Both matter. Neither can be ignored.
- All high school courses attempted and grades earned
- Rigor of coursework
- GPA and class rank
- Extracurricular activities
- Community service and leadership
- Employment and summer activities
- Extraordinary opportunities, challenges, and hardships
The academic record is the foundation. Rigor matters as much as GPA. A strong grade in an easy course reads differently than the same grade in AP or IB coursework. The non-academic factors give context to who the student is outside of the classroom.
Source: admissions.tamu.edu/apply/freshman
The Engineering Wrinkle OOS Families Miss
If your child wants to study engineering, there is an additional layer to understand.
Even Texas residents who qualify for automatic admission are not admitted directly to the College of Engineering. They are reviewed for placement into General Engineering, a gateway program, not admitted into the college itself. OOS applicants to Engineering go through the same holistic review process as every other OOS applicant.
There is no separate path and no shortcut, even for top students. The holistic review process applies in full. Engineering-bound OOS applicants should plan their application with that reality at the center, not as an afterthought.
Source: admissions.tamu.edu/apply/freshman
The Cost Reality
The financial gap between in-state and out-of-state attendance at Texas A&M is significant. Understanding it is not optional for OOS families planning around affordability.
There is one additional factor that widens this gap over time. The Texas legislature tuition freeze applies to resident students through the 2026–2027 academic year. Non-resident students are on a variable-rate tuition plan. The freeze does not apply to them, which means OOS tuition can increase year over year while resident tuition stays fixed.
Source: TAMU Student Business Services 2025–2026, sbs.tamu.edu
The Scholarship Path Most OOS Families Never Find
This is the most important financial fact in this entire post.
OOS students who earn a competitive academic scholarship from Texas A&M may be able to waive the additional costs of non-resident tuition and fees entirely.
Texas A&M offers competitive academic scholarships that are available to both in-state and out-of-state students. When an OOS student earns one of these scholarships, they may qualify to have the non-resident premium waived, bringing their cost of attendance significantly closer to the in-state rate.
This does not happen automatically. It requires the right application strategy, and that strategy needs to be built long before the application window opens.
December 1 is both the application deadline and the cutoff for scholarship consideration at Texas A&M. For OOS families, that date carries extra weight. Missing it does not just mean a late application. It means losing access to the scholarship pathway entirely.
Source: admissions.tamu.edu/resources/future-students/out-of-state
What This Means for Your Application Strategy
The OOS path at Texas A&M requires a different approach from the beginning, not adjustments made in the fall of senior year.
Holistic review means the academic record, the course rigor, the extracurricular depth, and the written application all need to work together. Scholarship positioning means the application has to be strong enough to earn a competitive academic award, not just earn admission. And the December 1 deadline means the entire strategy needs to be operational well before most families start thinking about applications.
The families who navigate this well do it early. The ones who don't are usually the ones who found out too late that the 51.3% acceptance rate was never their number to begin with.
If Texas A&M is on your child's list, the time to build the right approach is now.
UT Dallas vs. Purdue vs. Carnegie Mellon: Is the Out-of-State Premium Worth It?
UT Dallas costs $136,800 over four years. Purdue costs $180,000. Carnegie Mellon costs $348,000. Before your family commits to the out-of-state premium, here are the numbers and the five questions that actually matter.
UT Dallas, Purdue,
or Carnegie Mellon:
How to Think About
the Out-of-State Premium
Every spring, DFW families face a version of the same conversation. The acceptance letters have arrived. The financial aid packages are in. And somewhere on the kitchen table is a decision that looks, on the surface, like a simple choice between a school you recognize and a school you know well. It is not a simple choice.
I have spent 25 years in education and the last several working directly with DFW families on exactly these decisions. The question I hear most often comes down to this: is the out-of-state school worth the extra money?
For families with students in STEM, business, and engineering, three schools come up together more than almost any other combination right now. UT Dallas. Purdue. Carnegie Mellon. Each one represents a different point on the cost spectrum. Each one has a legitimate case to make. And most families are making this decision without the data they actually need.
This post is an attempt to fix that.
The Cost Ladder, Honestly
Before we talk about rankings or employers or outcomes, let's get the numbers on the table. These are sticker-price cost of attendance figures — tuition, fees, housing, food, books, and living expenses — for the 2024-2025 academic year, drawn directly from each institution's primary published sources.
That is a $43,000 four-year premium for Purdue over UTD. And a $211,000 four-year premium for Carnegie Mellon over UTD. Sit with those numbers for a moment before we move on. Families routinely make this decision without ever writing those figures down side by side.
What the Purdue Premium Actually Buys
Purdue is a genuinely excellent engineering school. That is not a qualifier — it is the starting point for an honest conversation.
In the US News Best Colleges 2026 rankings, Purdue's College of Engineering ranked 8th nationally among doctorate-granting universities. Nine of its eleven engineering programs placed in the top ten in their specific disciplines. Industrial engineering ranked 2nd. Aerospace and astronautical engineering ranked 3rd. Civil engineering ranked 3rd. These are programs that compete with MIT, Stanford, and Georgia Tech for the same students.
US News 2026
College Scorecard
The recruiting pipeline reflects that standing. Purdue graduates go to Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Caterpillar, John Deere, Raytheon, and a long list of major defense, aerospace, and manufacturing employers who have been recruiting from West Lafayette for decades. If your child wants to build aircraft, design propulsion systems, or work in industrial engineering at a global manufacturer, Purdue's network is a real and meaningful asset.
The $43,000 four-year premium is real. So is the question of whether your child needs to leave Texas to access what Purdue offers.
For some students and some programs, yes. For others, no. That answer depends on what your child wants to study, which specific employers they want to work for, and whether those employers recruit meaningfully at both schools — or primarily at one.
What the Carnegie Mellon Premium Actually Buys
Carnegie Mellon is in a different category entirely, and the price reflects it.
CMU ranked 2nd nationally in undergraduate engineering in the US News 2026 rankings. Its computer science program is consistently ranked among the top two or three in the country. Its robotics institute is the largest of its kind in the world. Its ECE program feeds Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, and virtually every major technology employer in the country.
US News 2026
College Scorecard
The $211,000 four-year sticker premium over UTD is real. But here is what most families do not know before they start this process: Carnegie Mellon meets 100 percent of demonstrated financial need for all US citizens and permanent residents. Families earning under $75,000 annually attend tuition-free. Families earning under $100,000 have their full demonstrated need covered without loans.
The sticker price at CMU is genuinely irrelevant for a large portion of families. The question is what CMU costs your family specifically. Run the net price calculator before you make any assumptions.
If your family's net price at CMU comes out to $40,000 per year after institutional aid, you are looking at a $160,000 four-year total — still more than UTD, but a very different conversation than $348,000.
What UT Dallas Actually Delivers
This is where I want to spend some time, because UTD gets undersold in these conversations.
UT Dallas ranked 77th nationally in undergraduate engineering in the US News 2026 rankings, 49th among public universities, and 3rd among public universities in Texas behind only UT Austin and Texas A&M. The Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science is a legitimate research institution — UT Dallas holds R1 Carnegie Classification status, shared by fewer than 150 institutions in the country.
3rd public in Texas
in Texas (Forbes)
College Scorecard
Forbes named UT Dallas the number one best-value public university in Texas. The average net price after grants and scholarships is $16,094 per year. For families who qualify for the Comet Promise program — household income at or below $100,000 — tuition is fully covered through a combination of institutional funding, scholarships, and grants.
The employer network deserves more attention than it typically gets. UT Dallas sits in the middle of a technology and corporate corridor that includes Texas Instruments, AT&T, Ericsson, Cisco, Samsung Austin Semiconductor, Lockheed Martin, L3Harris, Toyota North America, and multiple Goldman Sachs DFW operations. Eighty-three percent of UTD's student body are Texas residents. These employers are not recruiting at UTD because it is convenient. They are recruiting at UTD because it produces graduates who know the regional market, understand the business environment, and are ready to work.
The DFW employer network is a feature of choosing UT Dallas, not a consolation prize for staying in Texas.
The Earnings Math
Here is a simple way to think about the earnings gap versus the cost gap.
The Purdue math is simpler. The four-year sticker premium over UTD is $43,200. The median earnings differential is approximately $4,400 per year. That premium pays back in roughly ten years — not a great return if financed with significant loans, but a reasonable calculation if your family can absorb the cost without debt.
None of this is advice to choose one school over another. It is a framework for making the decision with your eyes open.
Five Questions to Answer First
I work through these with every family I advise when an out-of-state school is on the table. They do not produce a single right answer. They produce the right answer for your child.
The overall engineering ranking is one data point, but your child is not enrolling in the overall engineering program. They are enrolling in mechanical engineering, or electrical engineering, or computer science. Look at the discipline-specific rankings before you make assumptions from the headline number.
Every school's financial aid page has a net price calculator. Run it. The sticker price gap between UTD and CMU is $211,000. The net price gap for your family may be significantly smaller — or, in some cases, nearly nonexistent.
Purdue's pipeline into aerospace and manufacturing is real and deep. But if your child wants to work in DFW's technology corridor, or in finance, or in healthcare administration, the question is whether Purdue's network is actually stronger for that goal than UTD's.
The College Scorecard gives you institution-wide median earnings. It is an imperfect but defensible starting point. Run the basic math: how many years of the earnings differential does it take to recover the cost differential? Is that timeline reasonable given your family's financial situation?
This is the hardest question to answer honestly, because prestige is real and it does carry weight in certain industries and hiring environments. But it is worth asking directly: is your family choosing this school because the data supports it, or because the name feels safer?
No Universal Right Answer
A student who wants to design jet engines and has a clear path into aerospace recruiting at Purdue may be making an excellent decision at $180,000. A student who earns significant need-based aid at Carnegie Mellon and wants to work in AI or robotics may be making an even better one. And a student who earns a UTD engineering degree, graduates with minimal debt, and enters the DFW technology market at 22 years old with zero loan payments may be making the smartest financial decision of all three.
What matters is that your family has the information to make the call deliberately — not based on rankings alone, not based on name recognition, and not based on what feels right in April when the acceptance letters are on the table.
These decisions start earlier than most families realize. The school list, the financial strategy, and the application approach are all connected. By the time the letters arrive, the decisions that shaped them are already behind you.
If your child graduates in 2027, 2028, 2029, or 2030, there is still time to get this right.
UTD Common Data Set 2024-2025 (oisds.utdallas.edu) / Purdue Office of the Bursar 2024-2025 (purdue.edu/treasurer) / Carnegie Mellon Student Financial Services 2024-2025 (cmu.edu/sfs) / US News Best Colleges 2026 / US Department of Education College Scorecard / Forbes Best Value Colleges 2023 / UTD Office of Admission and Enrollment (enroll.utdallas.edu)
This is the right time to start the conversation.
25 years in education. Independent. Experienced.
Keller-based, serving DFW families in person and students nationwide virtually.
A Strong College Application Is Not Built in August of Senior Year
What the current UT Austin and Texas A&M acceptance rates mean for DFW families with students in 9th, 10th, and 11th grade, and why the families who get where they want to go start the conversation earlier than most.
A Strong College Application Is Not Built in August of Senior Year
What the current UT Austin and Texas A&M acceptance rates mean for DFW families with students in 9th, 10th, and 11th grade, and why the families who get where they want to go start the conversation earlier than most.
Every spring, DFW families with high school juniors start searching the same two questions: what is the UT Austin acceptance rate, and what is the Texas A&M acceptance rate. They are looking for reassurance, or at least a realistic picture of what their child is up against. The numbers they find, depending on where they look, are often out of date or pulled from the wrong source.
Here are the current figures, pulled directly from the official institutional dashboards.
UT Austin: IRRIS Interactive Common Data Set 2024-25, reports.utexas.edu | Texas A&M: ABPA Applied/Admitted/Enrolled Dashboard, Fall 2025, abpa.tamu.edu
Those are not the numbers from when an older sibling applied. The applicant pool at both schools has grown significantly over the past several years, and the doors have narrowed accordingly. Families who are planning based on older data are working with an outdated map.
But the numbers themselves are not the point of this post. The point is what they mean for a DFW family with a student who is finishing 9th, 10th, or 11th grade right now.
The Common App Does Not Start the Process. It Closes It.
There is a common assumption among DFW families that the college application process begins in the summer before senior year, when the Common App opens on August 1. That assumption is understandable. The Common App is the most visible part of the process. It is where everything gets submitted.
But the application is not built in August. It is built over the three years that come before it.
The students who submit strong applications to UT Austin and Texas A&M in the fall of their senior year did not start strong in August. They accumulated the experiences, interests, and context that make a compelling application over the preceding three years. By the time the Common App opens, the students who are positioned well are already ready. The application is a record of who they became, not a performance they put together at the last minute.
This is not an argument for anxiety. It is an argument for timing. If your child is finishing one of those earlier years right now, their window is open.
Every Applicant Has Strong Scores. That Is Not What Gets You In.
At a 26.6% acceptance rate, UT Austin is rejecting nearly three out of four applicants. The students who are not admitted are not failing students. They are accomplished students with strong transcripts and competitive test scores who were not differentiated in the committee room.
Admissions officers do not admit transcripts. They admit people. The students who are accepted at competitive schools are the ones whose applications told a story no one else in the pool could tell.
That distinction matters for how a family thinks about preparation. The question is not just how to make a student look competitive on paper. It is how to help a student understand and articulate who they actually are, what they genuinely care about, and where they are going, in a way that is specific enough to be remembered.
- Demonstrated interest, shown consistently over time, not manufactured at the last minute
- A coherent narrative that connects who your child is to where they are going
- Depth in a few things, not volume across many
The students who submit the most effective applications are not the ones with the longest activity lists. They are the ones with the clearest sense of who they are and why it matters. That clarity takes time to develop. It also takes someone who knows the right questions to ask.
Most DFW Families Are Sitting on a Stronger Application Than They Realize.
One of the things I see consistently in my work with DFW families is that the material is almost always there. The student has experiences that did not feel significant at the time. Interests that never made it onto a resume. Context that explains the transcript in a way the grades alone cannot.
Most families do not know how to find those things, surface them, or shape them into something a college can understand and remember. That is not a criticism. It is simply not something families are equipped to do on their own, and it is not something a student can usually do for themselves.
That is the work. Not filling out forms. Not building a list of safety schools. Not writing a draft of the Common App essay in August. The work is helping a student understand their own story well enough to tell it to a stranger in a compelling way, and doing that before senior year leaves enough time to get it right.
This Is the Right Time to Start the Conversation.
Green College Admissions works with DFW families at every stage of the process. For families with students in the earlier high school years, the conversation is about building the right foundation, understanding what colleges are looking for, and helping a student develop the experiences and self-awareness that make a strong application possible.
For families with juniors, the conversation is more immediate. There is still time. But not unlimited time, and how the next several months are spent matters.
I am Keller-based and serve DFW families in person. I also work with students nationally through virtual consulting. The initial conversation is the right place to start.
Keller-based, serving DFW families in person.
UT Austin acceptance rate: IRRIS Interactive Common Data Set 2024-25, Section C1. reports.utexas.edu/common-data-set/interactive
Texas A&M acceptance rate: ABPA Applied, Admitted and Enrolled Dashboard, Fall 2025. abpa.tamu.edu/accountability-metrics/student-metrics/applied-admitted-enrolled
Cal Berkeley: Built for California. Brutal for Everyone.
California families assume Berkeley is their school. The data tells a more complicated story. Here's what the numbers actually say about in-state advantage, acceptance rates, and what it means for your list.
Cal Berkeley: Built for California.
Brutal for Everyone.
California families assume Berkeley is their school. The data tells a more complicated story.
Every year, California families put UC Berkeley near the top of the college list with a quiet confidence that other schools don't get. The assumption is understandable. Berkeley is a public university. It was built by California, funded by California, and designed to serve California students first. In-state tuition is a fraction of out-of-state. California residents make up the vast majority of the admitted class.
All of that is true. And none of it changes what the acceptance rate actually is.
2024-25
Received
Extended
Roughly 1 in every 9 applicants received an offer of admission. That is not a California number. That is not a residency number. That is the number for everyone who applied, and it applies regardless of where you grew up.
The California Advantage Is Real
To be clear: California residency matters at Berkeley. It matters structurally and it matters in the data. In the most recent admitted class, 79% of admitted first-year students were California residents. That figure comes directly from Berkeley's official August 2024 admissions release citing UCOP data.
Berkeley is, by design, a California institution. The state legislature funds it, the UC system prioritizes in-state enrollment, and the numbers reflect that mandate. A California applicant is competing in a larger and more favorable pool than an out-of-state student.
Californians own the lion's share of a very small room. The room is still very small.
But 79% of 14,502 is still only about 11,457 California admits. Against a backdrop of tens of thousands of California applicants, that number puts the advantage in perspective. Residency moves the odds in your favor. It does not move them to your favor.
A Decade of Decline
The most important context for any Berkeley conversation isn't today's acceptance rate. It's the direction the rate has been moving, and for how long.
| Year | Overall Acceptance Rate | Trend |
|---|---|---|
| 2017 | ~17.1% | |
| 2019 | ~16.3% | ↓ |
| 2021 | ~14.0% | ↓ |
| 2023 | ~11.3% | ↓ |
| 2025 | 11.43% | → |
| ~Estimated figures. Source: UC Berkeley CDS historical / UC Freshman Fall Admissions Summary via UCOP. 2025 figure from UC Berkeley CDS 2024-25 / opa.berkeley.edu Quick Facts. | ||
Applications to Berkeley surged approximately 51% between 2017 and today. The number of available seats did not grow at anything close to that rate. That math runs in one direction only, and it has been running that way for nearly a decade.
The rate appears to have stabilized around 11% for the past two cycles. That is not a recovery. That is the new floor, and families planning around a 15% or 17% Berkeley from a few years ago are working with outdated information.
If Berkeley is on your student's list as a "likely" or a fallback, that strategy needs to be revisited. An 11.43% overall acceptance rate means Berkeley belongs in the same planning tier as other highly selective universities, with the same level of application investment and the same expectation of a strong backup list.
The Numbers, Plainly
126,843 people applied to UC Berkeley in the most recent application cycle. 14,502 received offers of admission. That means 112,341 did not.
The majority of those 112,341 were California residents. Being from California narrowed the gap. It did not close it.
Did Not Get In
California Residents
Hard For Everyone. Including Californians.
Berkeley isn't a school that's hard for out-of-state students and manageable for everyone else. It's hard for everyone, including the Californians it was built to serve. The in-state advantage is real and it matters for how you build your college list. It does not change what kind of application Berkeley requires.
Being a Californian moves the needle. It does not move the mountain.
- Truth: California residents have a meaningful structural advantage at Berkeley. The admitted class is 79% California.
- Myth: That in-state advantage makes Berkeley accessible or likely for a typical California applicant. It does not.
- Reality: With an 11.43% overall rate and over 126,000 applicants, Berkeley requires the same quality of application as any other highly selective university.
- Implication: California families should plan their college list with Berkeley as a reach, support it with well-researched match and likely schools, and apply early where possible.
Building a list that includes Berkeley?
The data tells you what the odds are. Strategy determines what you do with them. Let's build a plan that's honest about Berkeley and strong enough to work without it.
Work With JoeVanderbilt's Acceptance Rate: What the Last Decade Actually Shows
Vanderbilt's acceptance rate was around 11% in 2014. For the Class of 2029, it fell to 4.7%. Here's what that means for families with Vanderbilt on their list.
Vanderbilt's Acceptance Rate Has Tightened Considerably.
What It Means for Families Applying Today.
The trend every serious applicant needs to understand.
If Vanderbilt is on your student's list, there is one number you need to update before you go any further.
The school's acceptance rate in 2014 was approximately 11 percent. For the Class of 2029, it fell to 4.7 percent overall. The regular decision rate alone dropped to 3.3 percent. And for the Class of 2030, the regular decision rate hit 2.8 percent, the lowest in Vanderbilt's history.
That is not a small shift. That is a fundamentally different school to get into.
What the Numbers Actually Show
Here is the full trajectory, drawn from Vanderbilt's official Common Data Sets and admissions releases. The decline is not a blip. It is a decade-long compression with no sign of reversing.
Source: Vanderbilt University Common Data Sets 2014-2025 and official admissions releases. Years marked "est." are estimated from aggregators citing the CDS; 2022 forward confirmed from official Vanderbilt data.
The story is not just the rate dropping. It is why it dropped.
Vanderbilt's entering class size has held at approximately 1,600 students for at least a decade, per the university's own Common Data Set. The number of available seats has not meaningfully changed. What has changed is the number of people competing for them.
~3,300 admitted
Class size: ~1,600
2,304 admitted
Class size: ~1,600
More applicants. Same seats. The math is unavoidable. Applications more than doubled from the 2014 cycle to the 2025 cycle. Every new applicant who joins the pool competes for the same roughly 1,600 spots.
Why So Many More Students Are Applying
Three forces are compounding at the same time, and none of them are going away.
What This Means for a Texas Family
A student with a 3.9 GPA and a 1450 SAT who looks at Vanderbilt as a "competitive reach" is not wrong. But "competitive reach" in 2025 means something very different than it did in 2014.
The RD acceptance rate now sits in the same range as schools families typically treat as Ivy-adjacent longshots. The more strategic path is Early Decision.
Recent Cycles
Class of 2030
Through ED
For a student who has done the financial work and knows Vanderbilt is their first choice, applying Early Decision is not just a preference; it is a strategic necessity.
The other thing Texas families need to understand is that Vanderbilt has no in-state preference. There is no automatic admissions pathway, no state mandate, no reciprocity agreement. Every Texas applicant is competing in the same pool as students from New York, California, Massachusetts, and 87 other countries. Eighty-five percent of Vanderbilt's entering class comes from out of state. Texas students are the out-of-state applicants here.
Texas families who have only ever navigated UT Austin or Texas A&M, both of which have structured in-state pathways, can underestimate how different a Vanderbilt application is. There is no auto-admit. There is no guaranteed second look. The application does all the work, or it does not work at all.
The Plan Has to Match the School
Vanderbilt is still an exceptional university. It meets 100 percent of demonstrated financial need with no loans in initial aid packages. Its residential college system creates an unusually strong campus community for a research university. The Peabody College of Education consistently ranks among the best in the country. The Blair School of Music is genuinely elite. None of that has changed.
What has changed is the standard of the application. The work ethic, the narrative, the specificity of fit required to stand out in a pool of 50,000-plus applicants, many of whom look very similar on paper to your student, is not the same conversation it was when you were in high school researching colleges.
If Vanderbilt is on the list, the planning conversation needs to happen earlier than most families think.
Ready to build a smarter application?
If your student has Vanderbilt on their list, now is the time to be strategic, not reactive. Let's build a plan that actually fits the data.
Schedule a ConsultationThe University of Michigan Acceptance Rate: What It Really Means for Out-of-State Students
Michigan's overall acceptance rate is 15.6%. But if your student isn't from Michigan, that number doesn't tell the whole story. Here's what the data actually shows.
The University of Michigan Acceptance Rate Is Not What You Think It Is
15.6% overall. But if you're not from Michigan, you're playing a different game entirely.
If you've been Googling "University of Michigan acceptance rate" and found a number somewhere around 15 to 16%, you now have half the story. The half that matters, especially if your student doesn't have a Michigan address, is something the university doesn't make easy to find.
Here's what the data actually says.
98,310 Applications. 15,373 Offers. You Do the Math.
For Fall 2024, the University of Michigan received 98,310 first-year applications and admitted 15,373 students.
Class of 2028 | Fall 2024
Fall 2024
1 offer per 6.4 apps
Source: University of Michigan Common Data Set 2024-25
That puts Michigan in the same conversation as Carnegie Mellon, Emory, and Georgetown. Five years ago, the acceptance rate was 26%. That's a 10-percentage-point collapse in half a decade, driven almost entirely by a surge in applications while admitted class size stayed relatively flat. Ten years ago, that same number was 32%.
The trend line doesn't reverse. Every family considering Michigan should be planning for a school that gets harder each year.
The Number Nobody Publishes
Here's where the story gets more complicated. Michigan is a public university with a legislative mandate to serve Michigan residents. That means its overall acceptance rate blends two pools that have dramatically different odds.
The university does not officially publish separate in-state and out-of-state acceptance rates, and has never confirmed a specific breakdown. What follows are figures commonly cited by third-party admissions analysts, not numbers released by Michigan. Treat them as directional context, not verified data:
Michigan enrolls approximately half its class from within Michigan. The pattern is consistent with what you'd expect from a flagship state university honoring a public mandate to serve state residents.
If your student is from Ohio, Texas, California, or anywhere outside the state, the 15.6% headline is probably too generous.
Out-of-state applicants at Michigan are competing in a pool that looks more like a highly selective private university than a state school. This is the gap that families often don't account for when they build a college list.
What Actually Gets You In
Michigan uses a holistic review process, meaning each application is read multiple times by multiple reviewers before a decision is made. The factors that matter, drawn from Michigan's official admissions page and Common Data Set:
| Factor | Weight |
|---|---|
| Course Rigor — the hardest schedule your school offers | Very Important |
| GPA — in context of your school's grading environment | Very Important |
| Essays — your voice, your story, your reasons for Michigan | Important |
| Recommendations | Important |
| Extracurricular Involvement — depth, leadership, community | Important |
| Test Scores — test-optional since 2024; submitted scores still reviewed in context | Important |
| Geography, Socioeconomic Context, First-Gen Status — underrepresented areas get explicit consideration | Considered |
| Legacy Status | Not Considered |
Source: admissions.umich.edu/apply/first-year-applicants/selection-process; UMich Common Data Set 2024-25
The CDS data on enrolled students reinforces the academic bar. Among enrolled first-year students in the 2024-25 cycle, the average GPA was 3.9, with roughly 39% holding a 4.0 or above and 54% landing between 3.75 and 3.99. For test-submitters in the Class of 2028, the mid-50% SAT range was 1360-1530 and the ACT range was 31-34.
Applications Have Tripled. Seats Haven't.
Here's what's driving that acceptance rate down year over year: the application pool is growing much faster than Michigan's freshman class.
Sources: UMich Common Data Set 2024-25 (Classes of 2024, 2025, 2028); The University Record, University of Michigan (Class of 2029 application volume)
Meanwhile, Michigan enrolls roughly 7,000 to 7,300 first-year students each year. The math is simple: more students chasing the same number of seats means a lower acceptance rate, even if the school doesn't change a single thing about how it evaluates applicants.
Part of what's driving that surge is national recognition. Forbes named the University of Michigan a "New Ivy" for 2025, citing its academic selectivity, employer appeal, and graduate outcomes. As the prestige landscape shifts away from traditional Ivy League schools, Michigan has emerged as one of the institutions employers increasingly prefer. That recognition brings attention, and attention brings applications.
Source: Forbes New Ivies 2025
The practical implication for a family outside Michigan: this is not a safety school. It's not even reliably a match school for most out-of-state applicants. It belongs on a college list that is built honestly around what the data shows, not what the brand feels like.
One More Thing to Know: Early Action
Michigan offers Early Action (non-binding) with a November 1 deadline and decisions by late January. Michigan does not publish EA vs. Regular Decision acceptance rates, so no official comparison exists. Independent analysts have observed that EA applicants tend to show higher acceptance rates, but Michigan itself states that applying EA does not confer a formal admissions advantage.
If Michigan is a genuine target, applying EA makes sense from a timing standpoint. It won't guarantee admission, but it gives you clarity earlier, and it signals genuine interest in a school that values demonstrated commitment.
What About the 2025-2026 Cycle?
Michigan's Class of 2029 cycle set an application record of 109,112, according to The University Record, University of Michigan's official news publication. The overall acceptance rate for that cycle is reported at 16.42%, a slight uptick driven by a larger admitted class alongside record application volume. The Common Data Set for 2025-2026, which will carry the official final figures, has not yet been published. When that data drops, this analysis will be updated. Check back at greencollegeadmissions.com/insights for the latest.
Source: The University Record, University of Michigan; UMich CDS 2025-26 pending
The Bottom Line for Families Outside Michigan
The University of Michigan is one of the strongest public universities in the country. For in-state students, it remains genuinely accessible, with third-party analysts commonly estimating in-state rates around 39%. For out-of-state students, those same third-party estimates put the rate around 18%, placing Michigan in the same competitive tier as many highly selective private universities, with out-of-state tuition to match.
If your student is serious about Michigan, the application needs to be built that way: course rigor maximized, essays written with specificity to Michigan's programs and community, and a college list that doesn't treat Ann Arbor as a fallback.
Ready to build a smarter application?
If your student has Michigan on their list, now is the time to be strategic, not reactive. Let's build a plan that actually fits the data.
Schedule a ConsultationJoe Green is an independent college admissions consultant and owner of Green College Admissions, based in Keller, TX. He works with students across the DFW area and nationwide to help them build thoughtful, strategic applications to competitive universities. Learn more at greencollegeadmissions.com.
UT Austin's Acceptance Rate: What 26.6% Actually Means for Your Texas Student
UT Austin's acceptance rate is 26.6%. But that number tells two very different stories depending on where your student is from. Here's what the data actually means for Texas families.
UT Austin's Acceptance Rate: What 26.6% Actually Means for Your Texas Student
If you've been watching UT Austin's acceptance rate drift lower year after year, you're not imagining it. For the Class of 2028 (Fall 2024 entry), UT received 72,885 freshman applications and admitted 19,417 students, landing at an overall acceptance rate of 26.6%. That's a real number from the official Common Data Set, and it deserves more than a headline. Here's what it actually means for a Texas family trying to plan.
26.6% Is an Average, Not Your Odds
The first thing to understand is that UT Austin's overall acceptance rate is a blended number. It includes in-state students, out-of-state students, auto-admits, holistic review admits, and everyone in between. When you blend those populations together, you get 26.6%. But your student isn't applying as a statistical average; they're applying as a specific kind of applicant.
In-state acceptance rate vs. out-of-state acceptance rate for the Class of 2028. Same school, two very different realities.
Texas residents fare significantly better than the headline suggests. The in-state acceptance rate for the Class of 2028 was approximately 41%, driven largely by the state's automatic admission policy. Out-of-state students, on the other hand, faced a far steeper climb, with an acceptance rate closer to 10%. Of roughly 23,000 out-of-state applicants, only about 2,332 were admitted. That gap is not a rounding error; it's state law in action.
Auto-Admit: The Floor, Not the Ceiling
Texas state law requires UT Austin to automatically admit any Texas resident who graduates in the top 5% of their high school class. It also requires that at least 90% of UT's freshman class come from Texas, with 75% of in-state seats reserved for those auto-admits. In practice, that means the majority of UT's incoming class is filled before holistic review even starts.
First, if your student is in the top 5%, they are guaranteed admission to UT Austin. What they are not guaranteed is their first-choice major. Auto-admit guarantees a seat on the Forty Acres; it does not guarantee a seat in Cockrell Engineering or McCombs Business. Major-specific competition is a separate, and often more difficult, conversation.
Second, if your student is just outside the top 5%, they move into holistic review, where they compete for a much smaller pool of remaining spots alongside out-of-state applicants who are often highly competitive nationally. The effective acceptance rate for that group is not 26.6%. It's considerably lower.
Applications Are Rising Faster Than Seats
Here's the trend that should concern every Texas family regardless of where their student stands: UT Austin received 90,562 freshman applications for Fall 2025, a 24.3% jump from the 72,885 applications received for Fall 2024. Out-of-state applications alone surged 48% in that single cycle. UT Austin has become a national destination school, not just a Texas flagship. Forbes named UT Austin a "New Ivy" for the third consecutive year in 2026, and the national attention that comes with that designation is showing up directly in application volume.
The university has not expanded its freshman class at anything close to the same rate. More applicants chasing roughly the same number of seats means the rate will keep falling. The Class of 2028's 26.6% will not be the floor.
What UT Actually Looks At
For students going through holistic review, UT Austin's admissions page lists the factors considered in their decisions. The CDS confirms the following are all "considered" in the review process: rigor of secondary school record, class rank, academic GPA, standardized test scores, the application essay, recommendations, extracurricular activities, talent and ability, character and personal qualities, first-generation status, geographic residence, state residency, volunteer work, and work experience.
That list looks broad because it is. UT does not publish average GPAs or test score cutoffs for holistically reviewed students, which makes planning harder. What we do know from UT's own statements is that scores matter: when the university moved back to test-required for the 2025-2026 cycle, they noted that students who submitted test scores during the optional period outperformed those who didn't, and that scores serve as a useful differentiator when the applicant pool is full of near-perfect GPAs.
The essays are not optional filler. With grades compressed near the top of the scale and class rank policies varying by high school, the personal statement and short answers are often the primary way a real human story gets into the file.
One Number That Actually Tells the Story
Yield rate for the Class of 2028. Nearly half of admitted students chose UT over every other option they had.
Of the 19,417 students UT admitted for Fall 2024, 9,210 enrolled. That is a striking number for a public university, where yield rates are typically lower because students use state schools as fallbacks. That's not just brand loyalty; it's a reflection of Austin's job market, UT's research infrastructure, and what a degree from the Forty Acres signals to employers in Texas and beyond.
For out-of-state families weighing cost against prestige, it's also a reminder that a lot of nationally competitive students are looking at UT and choosing it. The peer group your student would be entering is not what it was ten years ago.
What About the 2025-2026 Cycle?
UT Austin received 90,562 freshman applications for the Fall 2025 admission cycle, a record. Official admissions outcomes and the updated Common Data Set for 2025-2026 have not yet been published. When that data drops, this blog will be updated to reflect the new numbers. Check back at greencollegeadmissions.com/insights or subscribe to updates from Green College Admissions to be notified when it's live.
The Bottom Line for Texas Families
UT Austin is not as accessible as its public-university branding suggests, and it's not as impossible as its declining acceptance rate might imply. Where your student lands in that range depends heavily on class rank, the specific college they're targeting, and, for holistic review applicants, how well their application tells a coherent and compelling story.
Ready to build a smarter application?
If your student is a junior or senior and UT Austin is on the list, now is the right time to be strategic, not reactive.
Schedule a ConsultationJoe Green is an independent college admissions consultant and owner of Green College Admissions, based in Keller, TX. He works with students across the DFW area and nationwide to help them build thoughtful, strategic applications to competitive universities. Learn more at greencollegeadmissions.com.
Texas A&M's Acceptance Rate Is 57%. Here's Why That Number Is Misleading.
Texas A&M's 57% acceptance rate is real. It's also incomplete. Here's what the number doesn't tell you about how admissions actually works.
Every spring, thousands of Texas families google the same question: What are my student's chances of getting into Texas A&M?
The answer they find, 57%, sounds reassuring. More than half of applicants get in. Not bad, right?
Not so fast.
The Number Is Real. The Story Behind It Isn't That Simple.
Texas A&M received 54,905 applications for the Class of 2028. Of those, 31,472 were admitted. That math does produce a 57% acceptance rate, sourced directly from the university's own Common Data Set.
But that number is shaped by something most families don't factor in: automatic admission.
Texas law guarantees admission to any Texas public university for students who graduate in the top 10% of their high school class, provided they meet basic coursework requirements. At A&M, auto-admits make up more than 40% of the enrolled freshman class. They're counted in that 57% figure, and they pull the overall rate up significantly.
Here's what that means in plain terms: if your student is in the top 10% of their class, their path to A&M looks very different from a student who isn't. The headline acceptance rate reflects both groups combined. It doesn't separate them.
So What's the Real Number for Everyone Else?
For students going through holistic review, which includes most out-of-state applicants, international students, and in-state students outside the top 10%, the effective acceptance rate is estimated at 25% to 35%.
That's not a minor difference. That's the difference between a school that feels like a solid target and one that requires a real strategy.
Holistic review at A&M considers rigor of coursework, class rank, GPA, essays, and extracurricular involvement. Test scores are considered but not required. There's no formula. Admissions readers are evaluating the whole picture, and the competition in this pool is significant.
Where You Live Changes Your Odds
Geography matters more than most families realize.
In-state applicants: ~59% acceptance rate
Out-of-state applicants: ~49% acceptance rate
That 10-point gap exists because A&M's mission as a Texas public university naturally prioritizes Texas residents, and because auto-admission only applies to Texas high school graduates. Out-of-state students have no guaranteed pathway. Every one of them goes through holistic review.
If you're a Texas family, that's an advantage worth understanding. If you're applying from outside Texas, plan accordingly.
The Number That Actually Tells the Story
Application volume at Texas A&M has grown 34% over the past five years. The university accepted a similar number of students as it did five years ago. The pool just got significantly larger.
What that means: A&M isn't getting harder to get into because they're accepting fewer students. It's getting harder because more competitive students are applying.
The 57% will likely continue to drift lower, not because A&M changed, but because the applicant pool keeps growing.
What's Coming Next
Texas A&M is expected to release admissions data for the 2025-2026 cycle later this year. When that data drops, it will reflect applications submitted in fall 2025, the most competitive pool in school history. We'll cover it here and on Instagram the moment it's available.
The Bottom Line
The 57% acceptance rate isn't wrong; it's just incomplete. For families trying to build a real strategy around Texas A&M, the more useful questions are: Is my student an auto-admit? If not, how does their profile stack up in holistic review? And is A&M a target school, a reach, or something in between?
Those answers look different for every student. If you want to talk through where your student stands, schedule a free consultation.
Data sourced from the Texas A&M Common Data Set 2024-2025, published by the Office of Academic and Business Performance Analytics (ABPA).
Joe Green is an independent college admissions consultant and owner of Green College Admissions, based in Keller, TX. He works with students across the DFW area and nationwide to help them build thoughtful, strategic applications to competitive universities. Learn more at greencollegeadmissions.com.
Test-Optional Colleges 2026: What Your Child's Application Needs When There Is No Score
Going test-optional changes what admissions officers look for. Here is what your child's application needs to do when there is no score in the file.
Most families breathe a sigh of relief when they decide to go test-optional. No more SAT prep. No more retakes. One less thing to worry about.
Here is what they do not realize: going test-optional does not remove pressure from the application. It redistributes it.
When there is no score in the file, admissions officers look harder at everything else. And the section that carries the most additional weight is the one most families prepare for least: extracurricular activities.
Should Your Child Submit SAT Scores in 2026?
This is one of the most common questions parents of high school juniors and seniors are asking right now — and the answer is not as simple as "test-optional means you do not have to."
Many colleges that are test-optional for 2026 and 2027 still consider scores when they are submitted. Research consistently shows that a strong score, when present, still helps. The decision to go test-optional is strategic, not automatic.
If your child has a score that falls at or above the 50th percentile for a given school's enrolled class, submitting it is almost always the right call. If the score falls below that range, going test-optional may make sense — but only if the rest of the application is built to carry the weight.
That is the part most families skip over.
What Test-Optional Actually Means for College Application Activities
When admissions officers read a test-optional file, they are not reading it the same way they read a file with a strong score attached. They are asking a different question.
Not: does this student have the academic preparation to succeed here?
But: what else tells me this student will make a difference on our campus?
The extracurricular section is where that question gets answered. Or does not.
The Biggest Myth About College Application Activities
More activities do not make a stronger application.
Admissions officers are not counting. They are reading.
A long list of unrelated clubs, sports, and volunteer hours signals scattered energy. It does not signal a student who has found something they care about, committed to it, and grown because of it.
The families who understand this early — before junior year, not during senior fall — are the ones whose applications tell a coherent story.
What Strong Extracurriculars for College Actually Look Like
After 25 years in education and working with students through this process, the pattern in competitive test-optional applications is consistent. Four things show up in the files that stand out.
Depth over breadth. One activity pursued seriously for two to three years tells an admissions officer far more than eight activities attended casually. Depth signals commitment. It signals that your child is capable of sustained engagement with something difficult.
A Signature Activity. Every competitive application has one activity that, if you removed it, the application would collapse. It is the anchor. It is the thing that reveals who the student is at their core, not just what they have done. It does not have to be a club or a sport. It can be a creative practice, a business, a research focus, or a cause. But it has to be real, sustained, and specific.
Impact over title. A "Vice President" title with no evidence of impact tells admissions officers nothing a club membership card could not. What moves the needle is evidence that your child started something, built something, or solved something. That a program grew. That a problem got addressed. That something exists now that did not exist before your child showed up.
A through-line. The strongest applications connect who the student is to what they are building. The extracurricular section is not a resume. It is a narrative. And the best narratives have a thread running through them that makes the whole thing coherent.
The Four-Year Build: Why Timing Matters
One of the most common mistakes families make is treating the extracurricular section as a senior-year task. It is not. It is a four-year build.
Freshman year is about curiosity. Sophomore year is about exploration. Junior year is about commitment. Senior year is about story.
By the time your child is filling out the Common Application, the story is already written. The question is whether it is worth reading.
If your family is starting to think about this now, the best time to begin is before junior year. The second best time is today.
How to Stand Out in College Applications When Going Test-Optional
This is one of the fastest-rising search terms among parents of high school juniors right now, and for good reason. The answer is not complicated, but it requires honest self-assessment.
Ask these questions about your child's current activity list:
Is there one thing your child has done longer and more seriously than anything else? That is the Signature Activity. If the answer is no, that is the most important thing to address before senior year.
Does the list tell a story about who your child is becoming? Or does it look like a checklist assembled for the sake of the application?
Is there evidence of impact? Something that changed because your child was involved?
If the answers are not clear, the application will not be clear either. And in a test-optional file, clarity is everything.
When to Start College Prep
For families asking when to start college prep, the answer for extracurricular strategy is the beginning of ninth grade — or as soon as possible after that.
For families who are already in junior or senior year: it is not too late to reframe what exists. The story can still be shaped. But it requires an honest look at what is there, what is missing, and what the application needs to say.
That is exactly the kind of conversation I have with families at Green College Admissions.
Working With Green College Admissions
I am Joseph Green, an independent college admissions consultant based in Keller, TX. I have 25 years in education and opened Green College Admissions in 2024 to serve DFW families in person and students nationwide virtually.
My approach starts with self-discovery. Before we talk about college lists, we talk about who your child is and what they are building. The application follows from that — not the other way around.
If your child is applying test-optional and you want to make sure the rest of the file is doing what it needs to do, reach out. We can walk through the activity list together and figure out what the story needs to say.
Reach me at greencollegeadmissions.com/contact or DM me on Instagram.
Joseph Green is an independent college admissions consultant based in Keller, TX. He has 25 years in education and founded Green College Admissions in 2024. He works with DFW families in person and students nationwide virtually. greencollegeadmissions.com
Test-Optional Colleges for Fall 2027: What Families Need to Know Before Skipping the SAT
Test-optional doesn't mean what most families think. Here is what the data shows, which schools require scores for Fall 2027, and what admissions offices actually review when there is no score.
If you have searched "should my child take the SAT" or "test optional colleges 2026" in the past few months, you are not alone. These are among the most searched college admissions questions in the country right now, and families searching them are looking for a straight answer.
Here is the straight answer: test-optional does not mean what most families think it means. And for students applying to college in fall 2026 for fall 2027 enrollment, understanding the difference could determine where they get in.
What Does Test-Optional Mean for College Applications?
Test-optional means a student can choose whether or not to submit an SAT or ACT score. If they submit a score, it will be reviewed. If they do not, it will not be held against them.
That last part is where the misunderstanding lives. Not being held against you is not the same as not mattering.
When a score is absent from an application, admissions officers do not simply skip that space. They fill it with everything else on the file. The transcript carries more weight. The essays carry more weight. The extracurricular record, the course rigor, the letters of recommendation — all of it carries more weight.
The application does not get shorter. It gets harder.
SAT vs. Test-Optional: What the Data Actually Shows
The question parents are searching right now is not just "what is test-optional" — it is "SAT vs test optional, which is better for my child?" Here is what the data shows.
According to a widely cited analysis from the Common App, students who submitted test scores to highly selective schools were admitted at roughly twice the rate of those who did not. That is not a small edge. That is the difference between a realistic chance and a long-shot application.
At the same time, over 90 percent of colleges and universities in the United States retained test-optional or test-free policies for Fall 2026 applicants, according to FairTest. The option to go test-optional is real and widely available.
And the behavior of applicants themselves tells part of the story: for the first time since 2021, more students applying in the 2025-26 cycle submitted test scores than did not, according to the Common App End-of-Season Report 2024-25. Students are reading the landscape and responding.
The takeaway is not that every student must submit a score. It is that the SAT vs. test-optional decision is a strategic one with real consequences, and it deserves more thought than most families give it.
Do Colleges Require the SAT in 2026? A School-by-School Breakdown
One of the most searched questions in college admissions right now is "do colleges require SAT 2026" — and the honest answer is: it depends on the school, and the landscape is changing quickly.
Here is where six commonly researched schools stand for students enrolling in Fall 2027, verified as of April 2026.
Test Required for Fall 2027:
University of Texas Austin returned to requiring standardized test scores beginning with Fall 2025 applicants. That requirement continues for Fall 2027 enrollment. All freshman applicants must submit official SAT or ACT scores.
Auburn University is requiring test scores for all first-year applicants beginning Fall 2027. The pandemic-era test-optional pathway ends after the Fall 2026 cycle.
Purdue University has maintained its test-required policy and requires SAT or ACT scores for freshman admission.
Test-Optional for Fall 2027:
Texas A&M University remains test-optional and has confirmed that low scores will not disadvantage an applicant. Students who have scores are encouraged to submit them, but they are not required.
University of Michigan formally adopted a permanent test-optional policy in 2024. Scores are welcome but not required for Fall 2027 applicants.
University of Virginia is test-optional for Fall 2026 applicants. No change has been announced for Fall 2027.
One important note: testing policies continue to evolve. Always verify directly with each school's official admissions page before making a final decision. The data above reflects institutional admissions pages verified in April 2026.
Should Your Child Take the SAT? A Framework for Deciding
This is the question families are actually searching, and it does not have a single answer. It has a framework.
Start here: if any school on your child's list requires scores, there is no decision to make. They need to take the test. With UT Austin, Auburn, and Purdue all requiring scores for Fall 2027, many Texas families applying to in-state schools alongside out-of-state options will need scores regardless.
If all target schools are test-optional, the question becomes: will a score help or hurt the application? A general rule used by most admissions counselors: submit if the score is at or above the middle 50 percent range for admitted students at target schools. Withhold if it falls significantly below. Most schools publish this range on their Common Data Set.
A third consideration is merit scholarships. Many schools that are test-optional for admission still use scores for scholarship decisions. Not submitting a score could cost a student meaningful aid even if it does not affect admission.
The bottom line on whether your child should take the SAT: if there is any reasonable chance of a strong score, taking the test preserves options. Not taking it eliminates them.
College Application Extracurriculars: What Admissions Offices Actually Review Without a Score
This is where the conversation gets practical. Families searching "college application extracurriculars" and "how to stand out in a college application" are looking for the same thing: what actually matters when a score is not part of the file.
When no score is included, four areas of the application carry the weight.
Course rigor. Admissions offices review the transcript not just for grades but for the difficulty of the courses taken. Without a test score to contextualize academic ability, the transcript becomes the primary signal. A 3.9 GPA in standard-level courses reads differently than a 3.7 in AP and dual-enrollment coursework. Rigor matters more, not less, in a test-optional application.
Extracurricular depth over breadth. The most common mistake families make on the activities section is treating it like a resume that needs to be full. Admissions officers are not counting activities. They are looking for depth, commitment, and evidence that a student has pursued something with genuine interest over time. What stands out is a through-line: a student who can articulate what they have built, led, or created, and why it matters to them. A long list of clubs is not a strategy.
Essays that reveal character. The personal statement and supplemental essays carry significantly more weight in test-optional review. These are not just writing samples. They are the primary place a student can show who they are beyond the transcript. Generic essays about overcoming adversity or discovering a love of community service do not move the needle in a competitive pool. Specific, honest, well-crafted writing does.
Letters of recommendation. A strong letter confirms what the rest of the application claims. A teacher who can speak specifically to a student's intellectual curiosity, engagement, or growth over time adds real value. A form letter with a name swapped in does not.
When to Start College Prep: What This Decision Means for Your Timeline
Searches for "when to start college prep" spike sharply in October and again in spring of junior year. If you are reading this in spring of junior year, the timing is not bad. But it is tight.
The test-optional decision should not be made in the fall of senior year when applications are due. It should be made in spring or summer of junior year, because it shapes the entire preparation strategy.
If your child is going test-optional, the extracurricular strategy, essay preparation, and recommender selection all need to begin earlier than most families start them. These are not things that can be assembled in August and September.
If your child is planning to submit a score, test prep should be well underway by spring of junior year, with enough time for a retake in fall of senior year if needed.
How Competitive Is College Admissions in 2026?
Searches for "how competitive is college admissions" and "college acceptance rates 2026" reflect a genuine anxiety in families right now, and the anxiety is not unfounded.
Application volume at highly selective institutions increased by approximately 12 percent between 2023 and 2026, according to NACAC. When more students are competing for the same number of spots, every element of the application matters more.
The test-optional era created a specific kind of false confidence: the belief that removing one competitive variable made the process more accessible. In practice, it made the remaining variables more consequential. Schools did not start admitting less-prepared students. They started evaluating preparation differently.
For a student with a strong test score, withholding it in a test-optional environment is rarely strategic. For a student without a strong score, going test-optional at schools that genuinely evaluate applications holistically is a legitimate path, but only when the holistic application is built to carry it.
The Bottom Line
Test-optional is not a loophole. It is a policy that shifts where the work has to happen.
For families navigating this decision in 2026, the most important thing is to make it deliberately, with accurate information about which schools require scores, what the data shows about submission rates and admit rates, and whether the rest of the application is positioned to support a test-optional strategy.
Going test-optional is a legitimate choice at many schools. The extracurricular depth, essay quality, and course rigor required to support that choice are what Part 2 of this series covers.
If you want to talk through this decision for your child's specific situation and school list, that is exactly the kind of work I do. Reach out at joseph@greencollegeadmissions.com.
Frequently Asked Questions
Should my child take the SAT in 2026? If any school on your child's list requires scores, yes. If all target schools are test-optional, the answer depends on whether scores would strengthen or weaken the application relative to the middle 50 percent range at those schools. When in doubt, taking the test preserves more options than not taking it.
What does test-optional mean for college applications? Test-optional means a student chooses whether to include SAT or ACT scores. Schools will consider scores if submitted and will not penalize students who do not submit. However, the rest of the application carries more weight when no score is included.
Do colleges require the SAT in 2026? It depends on the school. UT Austin, Auburn (starting Fall 2027), and Purdue require scores. Texas A&M, University of Michigan, and University of Virginia are test-optional for Fall 2027 applicants. Always verify directly with each school before applying.
What is the difference between test-optional and test-free? Test-optional schools will consider scores if submitted. Test-free (also called test-blind) schools will not consider scores even if a student submits them. The University of California system is the most prominent test-free example.
What do colleges look at instead of SAT scores in a test-optional application? Course rigor, extracurricular depth and commitment, essay quality, and letters of recommendation all carry more weight. Without a score, the transcript and the activities section become the primary signals of academic preparation and character.
When should my child start college prep? Spring of junior year is the target. That allows time for test prep and potential retakes, essay drafting over the summer, and a considered extracurricular narrative before senior year applications open in August.
How competitive is college admissions in 2026? Application volume at highly selective schools has increased approximately 12 percent between 2023 and 2026 per NACAC. Acceptance rates continue to decline at most selective institutions. Every element of the application carries more weight in a more competitive pool.
Part 2 of this series covers the extracurricular strategy that makes a test-optional application competitive. Coming soon to greencollegeadmissions.com/insights.
Sources: FairTest Test-Optional List (Fall 2026); Common App End-of-Season Report 2024-25; Common App Annual Report; NACAC State of College Admissions; institutional admissions pages verified April 2026.
Joseph Green is an independent college admissions consultant based in Keller, TX. He has 25 years in education and founded Green College Admissions in 2024. He works with DFW families in person and with students nationwide virtually. Reach him at joseph@greencollegeadmissions.com.
Southlake Carroll High School Gives Students the Foundation. Here's What They Need to Build on It.
Southlake Carroll High School gives students infrastructure most schools can't match. Here's what the college applications that get remembered do with it.
There's a reason Southlake Carroll High School families feel confident going into the college application process. The AP course catalog runs deep. The Business Academy and Medical Academy give students structured, discipline-specific experiences that most high schools in the country simply can't offer. Admissions officers recognize the rigor of a Southlake Carroll transcript. That part is real.
But here's what twenty-five years in education has taught me: the students whose applications get remembered aren't the ones who simply completed challenging coursework or an accelerated program. They're the ones who pushed their interests even further.
Rigor opens the file. It doesn't close it.
When an admissions officer reviews a Southlake Carroll application, the AP coursework and academy credentials tell them the student can handle a rigorous college program. That's a meaningful signal, and it matters. But it's also a reminder they're seeing from a lot of Southlake Carroll applicants and applicants from other high-performing schools in the same cycle.
What separates the applications that get remembered is what the student did with the foundation Southlake Carroll gave them.
What that actually looks like
For a Business Academy student, it's not enough to have completed the program. The application that truly stands out belongs to the student who took what they learned and did something with it outside the classroom, something with a result they can point to. A venture they launched, even modestly. A problem in their community they tried to solve through a business lens. Something documented, something real, something impactful.
For a Medical Academy student, the question admissions officers are asking is whether the student took their academic interest into the world. Coursework in a classroom is one thing. A student who carried that interest into a clinical setting, a research environment, or a community health initiative tells a different story entirely.
For a student deep in AP coursework, especially something like AP Environmental Science or AP Research, the opportunity is to connect what they're studying to something that exists outside the classroom. A student who turned a unit on sustainability into an actual campus initiative isn't just academically strong. They're demonstrating exactly what colleges say they want: someone who will show up on campus and be the difference.
The thing most families don't account for
The students who build these experiences are rarely doing it by accident. They're doing it because someone helped them see early enough that the application isn't built senior year. It's built in the years before.
An underclassman who starts thinking about this now has time. Time to pursue something with enough depth that it becomes a centerpiece, not a line item. Time to let results accumulate. Time to tell a coherent story about who they are and what they care about, rather than assembling a list of activities and hoping the pattern is clear.
Southlake Carroll High School gives your child the infrastructure. Their application is built on what they do with it.