Proud home of the Longhorns (and Professor Matthew McConaughey), UT Austin takes to heart its constitutional mandate to be “a university of first class,” a mission that laid the foundation for its standing as a “Public Ivy.” UT is known for carving its own path, from sculpting a sprawling home out of the Texas wilderness, to building some of the world’s fastest computers, to fighting for universities’ rights to use affirmative action to diversity their campuses.
So it should come as little surprise that this standard bearer offers its own college application system, but you can also apply through the Common App (and the requirements are the same, no matter which platform you use). And to show how serious school officials are about getting to know each of their applicants, the main application requires four essays, plus an option to write a fifth, and an optional (but highly recommended) extended resume. What are those prompts? Glad you asked ...
What are the University of Texas Austin supplemental essay prompts?
Prompt #1
Topic A: Tell us your story. What unique opportunities or challenges have you experienced throughout your high school career that have shaped who you are today? (500-700 words)
Prompt #2
Required Short Answer 1: Why are you interested in the major you indicated as your first-choice major? (maximum 40 lines, or approximately 250-300 words, typically the length of one paragraph)
Prompt #3
Required Short Answer 2: Describe how your experiences, perspectives, talents, and/or your involvement in leadership activities (at your school, job, community, or within your family) will help you to make an impact both in and out of the classroom while enrolled at UT. (maximum 40 lines, or approximately 250-300 words)
Prompt #4
Required Short Answer 3: The core purpose of The University of Texas at Austin is, "To Transform Lives for the Benefit of Society." Please share how you believe your experience at UT-Austin will prepare you to “Change the World” after you graduate. (maximum 40 lines, or approximately 250-300 words)
Prompt #5
(Optional) Short Answer 4: Please share background on events or special circumstances that you feel may have impacted your high school academic performance. (maximum 40 lines, or approximately 250-300 words)
Optional (but highly recommended) Expanded Resume
You may choose to submit an expanded résumé offering additional information about all of your achievements, activities, leadership positions, and student employment.
“That’s a lot of essays,” you say? It is.
And get this: If you’re applying to specific programs/majors or even the Honors College, you’ve got even more essays to tackle. (But we aren’t covering all those here.)
Before you go to write, you may want to spend some time learning more about what UT Austin values, so you can explore how your values line up and reflect those shared values in your essays. If so, you’ll find an extensive, by-the-numbers look at its offerings, from enrollment and tuition statistics to student life and financial aid information, on its Common Data Set. For deep insights into how this public research university envisions its role and how it wants to grow and evolve, read its strategic plan.
Alright. Let’s get to the fun stuff.
How Do I Write Outstanding Essays for the UT Austin Application?
How to Write UT Austin Required Essay/Topic A Prompt:
Topic A: Tell us your story. What unique opportunities or challenges have you experienced throughout your high school career that have shaped who you are today? (500-700 words)
This essay gives you the best chance to share with UT something about who you are beyond the grades and test scores. When you hear people talking about their personal statement or college essay, this is the essay they’re referring to.
If you’re applying to other colleges using the Common Application (or applying to other schools via the Coalition Application), you may already be writing this longer essay.
If so, here’s some advice:
Write your Topic A essay for UT so that it answers the same question you’re answering for the Common App (which sets a max limit of 650 words) and/or Coalition Application (which suggests but doesn’t strictly limit your essay to 500-650 words). UT asks that you keep your Topic A essay between 500-700 words, but for ease of doubling, probably stick close to 650 max, spending only the number of words necessary to tell your story in a concise, complete, and compelling manner.
Why answer the same question for all three? All the prompts for these application systems are so broad and open-ended that you can pretty much write about any topic (well, almost any) and you’ll be good. But more importantly, by focusing on writing one main essay for various application portals (head here for more on Common App vs Coalition), you can spend more time drafting and revising it so that it’s really, really great. #efficiency
“But what if I’m not applying to other schools using the Coalition Application or Common App?
Then write your deepest story.
What do we mean by that?
There’s so much to say about writing your personal statement that we’ve actually created an entire step-by-step video course. Oh, and it’s pay-what-you-can. :) Or if you want the short version, check out this free one-hour guide. It covers the three core parts of writing a great college essay: brainstorming your topic, structuring your essay, and revising it to make sure it’s doing its job. Or head here for a bunch of personal statement examples.
How to Write UT Austin Short Answer Essay #1
Why are you interested in the major you indicated as your first-choice major? (40 lines, or about 250-300 words)
This is a “Why major?” essay. Many colleges require it, and it generally means that they’re curious to hear about how you’ve prepared for your intended major. But for UT, it’s particularly important. Why?
Demonstrating that you (and your interests and extracurricular involvement) are a clear fit for your first-choice major are super important for UT. As in, more so than at most other schools. This essay is a great chance to demonstrate that fit.
You can read our full guide here. Or, here’s the short version:
Step #1: Imagine a mini-movie of the moments that led you to your interest in a specific subject or your intended major and create a simple, bullet-point outline.
For example:
Why biology?
Elementary school: Getting my first dinosaur toy and reading dinosaur books
Middle school: Visiting museums, seeing water under a microscope
High school: Doing online research, getting internship where we analyzed brainwaves and dissected a stingray
Step #2: Put your moments (aka the “scenes” of your mini-movie) in chronological order, as it’ll help you see how your interests developed. It also makes it easier to write transitions. Since you’ve got about 250-300 words for this essay, you can probably include one “scene” per every short paragraph or two.
Step #3: Decide if you want to include a specific thesis that explicitly states your central argument—in this case, what you want to study and why. You can put this thesis at the beginning, middle, or end of your essay.
Here’s an example essay that does a great job:
Example 1:
My interest in Gender and Sexuality Studies was sparked in my eighth grade Civics class when we studied topics pertaining to sexual equality. I went into the class knowing I believed women had a right to make choices for their own bodies and that view remained the same, but I discovered the complexity of abortion debates.
I challenged myself by thinking about the disparity between actual and potential personhood and the moral rights of unconscious lives. If pregnancy had the same consequences for men as it does women, how might the debate be different? Would this debate even exist?
A year later, I shadowed an OB/GYN at a nearby hospital. On my first shift, I watched an incarcerated woman receive a postpartum exam after giving birth in her cell toilet with just Advil, and the issues discussed in Civics suddenly became urgent and real.
My school projects have often focused on reproductive rights. I’ve spent numerous hours delving into summaries of Supreme Court cases on abortion and contraception, and am even known as the “Tampon Fairy” at school because I frequently restock the school bathrooms with tampons and condoms.
I’m interested in exploring how Gender and Sexuality Studies connect to Public Health and Reproductive Biology, as well as Public Policy and Law. The interdisciplinary nature of this major will allow me to investigate many other areas of study and create a more nuanced understanding of how this particular field interacts with our world and society. (246 words)
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Tips + Analysis:
Write an outline to organize your essay before you write. We actually advise this for most essays, especially those 200 words and longer. Even if you’re not used to writing outlines, you’ll find that doing this ahead of time will help you organize your thoughts and—bonus—save you some time. What do we mean by an outline? A simple bulleted list would do. For example, here’s this student’s outline:
Why Gender and Sexuality Studies:
Eighth grade Civics class conversations
Shadowing OB/GYN at a nearby hospital and seeing woman receive postpartum exam
Being the school “tampon fairy” (restocking school bathrooms with tampons and condoms)
School projects on reproductive rights
Thesis: Name my major and briefly say why
Pose some thought-provoking questions. Don’t shy away from raising compelling questions in your essay, like those posed by the author in the second paragraph. Demonstrating you know how to ask insightful and critical questions is just as (if not more) important than having all the answers.
Don’t know what you’ll be majoring in? Don’t sweat it. You may be asking: But what if I don’t know what my intended major is? Don’t worry. Even if you’re unsure of your exact major or career path, go with what interests you at the moment. You might research and select 1-2 areas of interest and describe how you became interested in each. If possible, connect them and discuss your interests using an interdisciplinary lens. When it comes time to apply, you’ll still want to select a major on your application, but when writing this essay, the subjects you’re interested in are likely within a single college anyways. It’s often tough to transfer between colleges, say from the College of Liberal Arts to McComb’s School of Business, but it’s typically easier to transfer within a given college, say, if switching from the psychology to the sociology program. If you’re choosing “undeclared” on your application, which you can do for several colleges at UT, that’s okay! Describing several areas of interest is still a good idea for this essay. It demonstrates your curiosity as well as your ability to make connections across disciplines.
To see an example of an interdisciplinary essay, check out the example below. (And below that is another great example for this prompt.)
Example 2: Why Literary Arts or Modern Culture and Media?
My whole life, storytelling has shaped me. When I lived in London, my parents would read me The Lion King every night until I’d memorized the whole book. In elementary school, I would curl up in my bed, warm lamplight making my room golden, listening to my dad bring to life classics like Wilderness Champion and Tom Sawyer. Later, I found audio storytelling, laughing hysterically at Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me on the car ride to school and connecting to a radio network of humanity through This American Life. It wasn’t long before I got hooked on visual narratives, mesmerized by the cinematic intensity of Whiplash and the whimsical world of Moonrise Kingdom, alternate realities I could explore as if they were my own. By high school, I was creating my own array of stories through satirical school newspaper articles, analysis of mise-en-scene in film class, podcasting, and my own locally-broadcasted radio series.
A concentration in the Literary Arts or Modern Culture and Media is the next step in my life of storytelling. The dynamic world of connection and vulnerability a well-told story can create is what continues to fascinate me. At Brown, I would explore how engaging narratives have been told in the past and can be innovated in the future through new digital platforms. Whether researching radio’s historical impact on public opinion during World War II or the Vietnam War, developing screenplays, producing my own documentary or learning from Writers-In-Residence, I hope to pioneer networks of connection. (250 words)
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Example 3: Why Neuroscience?
Imagine all the stars in the universe. The brain has a thousand times the number of synapses, making neurological errors a near certainty. I learned this fact firsthand as a 14 year-old, when I suffered from sleepless nights because of an uncomfortable, indescribable feeling in my leg. It took months of appointments and tests to be told it was a condition called cortical dysplasia. Even after the diagnosis, there is no cure.
I am lucky. My condition does not severely affect my quality of life. However, I know this is not the case for everyone. After this experience, I took AP Biology and attended a neuroscience program, which reinforced the subject as my future calling. One of the most impactful lectures discussed the plight of healthcare in developing nations. Newborns with extreme neurological deficits are common, but finding treatments is not. Without prenatal care, this is becoming a growing epidemic, leaving millions of children helpless.
With a degree in neuroscience, I will gain a strong understanding of neural tube development and neuronal migration in infants. I will then become a neurologist, specializing in pediatric care. I hope to work for humanitarian organizations, such as Doctors Without Borders, in Africa, where HIV and polio are rampant, as are numerous other diseases.
Imagine the stars once more. From across the world, I will look at the same stars in the future, as I help children secure the ability to not only look at the stars, but do much more. (247 words)
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How to Write UT Austin Short Answer Essay #2
Describe how your experiences, perspectives, talents, and/or your involvement in leadership activities (at your school, job, community, or within your family) will help you to make an impact both in and out of the classroom while enrolled at UT. (250-300 words)
If you’re applying to UT, you’ve likely already made an impact on your school, family, and community. Now it’s time to think beyond the four corners of your resume and consider how you’ll use your past to shape your future. If you think this feels a little bit like a “Why us?” essay, you’re not far off (and we applaud your critical analysis). But instead of incorporating details on how UT is going to change you, you’ll focus here on how you’d create lasting change at UT.
While this prompt isn’t new, the wording has been tweaked slightly, adding “your involvement in leadership activities” to the mix.
The student in the example below was writing to the old prompt, but he still did a great job of connecting his past experiences with opportunities at UT.
Example 4:
Some of my more interesting perspectives were formed in the backseat of my mom’s maroon Ford Explorer, where I’d unload the many questions inside my head, ranging from how toll roads worked to why we said the Pledge in school.
Today, my drive to learn new things has found an even more engaging outlet: arguing.
I’ve spent many hours with friends in coffee shops, arguing over myriad topics. With each conversation, I walked away with new insights. During a debate over the Green New Deal, for example, I learned the effects of government action on the employment rate. I’m excited about the prospect of bringing my love of the argument to UT through the Lincoln-Douglas debate program and growing my skills under the guidance of skilled mentors like SunHee Simon.
As a Longhorn, I’d execute on the ideals I advocate for, perhaps by creating a voter engagement campaign targeting underrepresented communities in Austin with the help of organizations like Texas Rising and Generation UN.
When I lost my fingertip in a tubing accident, I dealt with my loss by researching my amputation. The more I learned, the more comfortable I began to feel, and I was able to make educated decisions about things like my prosthetic and nail removal. At UT Austin, I hope to exercise my newfound love of research in undergrad projects like How Campaigns Affect Voters, documenting the public’s changing views of political candidates throughout an election cycle in order to better understand the impact of news coverage on an election.
Although I’ve outgrown the Explorer, I’ve become an explorer of sorts in my own right, and I can’t wait to continue asking new questions and speaking out against injustice with my fellow Longhorns, whether it’s in the Perry-Castañeda Library, the South Mall, or Duren Hall’s courtyard. (300 words)
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Tips + Analysis:
Spotlight your values. By showing how and where you’ll choose to make an impact on UT, you’re showing admission officers what’s important to you. (Not sure what those values are? Spend 5 minutes exploring and naming your top values by completing the Values Exercise.) While this student may be talking about the activities he’d join or the places on campus he can’t wait to explore, the details show what’s really important to him, like debate, community, social justice, and research.
Use the montage approach to write about multiple experiences. Consider using this prompt as an opportunity to expand on experiences you haven’t been able to highlight (or that don’t come through enough) elsewhere in your application. A mini-montage may be a strong, effective way to do just that. What’s a montage? It’s an approach we liken to a beaded bracelet, with your experiences/perspectives/talents serving as the beads + a thematic thread that connects them all together. For this student, “arguing” served as his thematic thread, while debate, voter engagement, and research were the beads he wanted to accent in this essay.
If you’d like to try a similar approach, follow these steps:
Make a list of 7-10 ways you’d contribute to UT based on activities/clubs/experiences you’ve been a part of. Why so many? So you can choose the ones you want to focus on the most.
Consider connecting each contribution to a particular value (i.e., creativity, collaboration, social justice). Here’s that Values Exercise again. You can use it to generate some ideas or to connect with your 7-10 contributions.
Try to weave in parts of yourself that you haven’t yet talked about elsewhere on your UT application. Maybe you haven’t written about your volunteering experience yet, or your love of ventriloquism. Here’s your chance.
Consider writing about your experiences (the beads) as vignettes (maybe one vignette per paragraph), and string them together with a theme they all have in common (maybe they all tie into your love of art/culture or they’re your favorite hobbies).
Find unusual connections. Ford Explorer, amputation, and UT. It may seem like a Jeopardy! question (“Alex, what are three seemingly unrelated topics?”), but they work well. The Ford Explorer was the student’s driving (pun likely intended) force for pursuing debate, while his amputation was the springboard for a newfound love of research. The examples are attention-getters, but they also clearly connect with his interests.
Do your research, but be honest. Make legitimate connections between your experiences and how you’ll use them to UT’s benefit. Executed poorly, it can seem like name-dropping (and UT admission officers can spot insincerity a Texas mile away). But with each mention—SunHee Simon, Texas Rising and Generation UN, How Campaigns Affect Voters—this student shows not just that he’s familiar with UT opportunities, but how each can enrich his experience on the Austin campus.
Paint a clear picture of your future. Help admission officers envision how you’d make an impact on campus using specific examples, like this: “At UT Austin, I hope to exercise my newfound love of research in undergrad projects like How Campaigns Affect Voters, documenting the public’s changing views of political candidates throughout an election cycle in order to better understand the impact of news coverage on an election.” Boom. In one sentence, the student lays down the written version of a breadcrumb trail, making clear how his past research experiences could inform how he could make a future difference on campus.
How to Write UT Austin Short Answer Essay #3
The core purpose of The University of Texas at Austin is, "To Transform Lives for the Benefit of Society." Please share how you believe your experience at UT-Austin will prepare you to “Change the World” after you graduate.
(250-300 words)
While the last prompt asks you to consider the impact you’ll make during your time at UT, this prompt fast-forwards you, Manifest-style, four years into the future. How will the post-UT you take what you’ve learned in college and use it to make a splash in the real world?
UT clearly doesn’t want just students on its campus—admission officials want critical thinkers and changemakers. Do you want to lead the charge for proactive, not reactive, pediatric health care approaches? Then your response might outline how the courses you take, the research you do, and the company you keep will help you initiate new cafeteria standards in elementary and secondary schools to reduce childhood obesity.
This essay, written for a similar prompt, could work well with just a few tweaks (which we’ll explain below).
Example 5:
Over the past 14 years, I’ve eaten 2,800 servings of peanut butter (PB), equal to 67.3% of my bodyweight. PB reflects who I am.
JUSTIN’s is the consistently gentle and cobbled PB. Providing a sweet but natural taste, Justin’s taught me to do the same in my interactions with others. Through participation in programs like UTeach Outreach and Alternative Breaks, I will become a better community member while growing into a leader and forming friendships.
JUBILIU is the imperfectly yet naturally perfect pebbled sesame PB. Non-homogenized in texture, it requires a big stir, but its natural taste is sustaining like its 600-year-old history. On one of my first days in China, my host mom and I ventured to Chinese Walmart, Wumart. Standing in the condiment aisle, she chose Jif for me, but I asked if there was a Chinese version. During my junior year immersion in China, I strove to be stirred around in the Chinese culture, adding to the depth of my own flavor, so I could purposely expand my worldview. Through UT’s Chinese Student Association, I look forward to immersing myself in and supporting the culture that taught me to purposely exert effort in my actions, seeking depth to lead a more sustaining life.
SUNBUTTER is the unpredictably necessary non-PB PB. SunButter taught me to embrace what is hard, understanding it will enrich my life journey, or better yet, someone else’s. Pursuing my passion for finance and broadening my understanding of the world, I’m excited to join the Global Macro Team.
Crafted by other PB brands, I’m a continually evolving PB brand. I’m Ella. My PB brand is nowhere near shelf-ready; I’ve more experiences to be had, Longhorns to interact with, and 14,600+ servings of PB left to savor. (294 words)
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Tips + Analysis
Consider building off your responses to Essay #2. To answer the previous prompt, you thought about what’s important to you based on what you’ve been involved with. Now, consider what needs you’ve filled and what values you’ve gained from that involvement. How is that steering (Longhorn pun intended) what you’ll continue to do and how you’ll choose to get involved in the future?
It’s OK to not write about your career. You don’t have to change the world through your 9-to-5. (Although if you are pursuing a field of study or career that could effect positive change on the world around you, this is a great place to discuss it.) Plenty of people satisfy their desire to do social good outside their job. So maybe it’s your extracurriculars, not your major, that’s helping you be the change you want to see. And that’s great! This student did a nice job of showing how her past experiences will help her contribute at UT—with the UTeach Outreach and Alternative Breaks, the Chinese Student Association, and the Global Macro Team. But had she been writing to this version of the prompt, she might have imagined how those experiences would help her change the world as a UT alum. So, likewise, make sure you take the longer view and focus on post-graduation activities.
Show you care about others. UT wants to make sure you’re the kind of person who’ll do good long after it’s something that looks good on a resume. How will you care for others with your UT education and your unique combination of skills and be the kind of Texas Exes the school is proud to call its own? Again, had this student been addressing today’s prompt, she might have gone into more detail on how she’s going to use finance and an expanded worldview post-UT.
Be specific, but not generic. Many of us would love to cure cancer and other diseases, or leave the world a little better than we found it by expanding sustainable energy sources. Clear, lofty goals for sure, but they’re probably not going to help you stand out as a changemaker. So how can you frame your potential contributions in a way no one else can? By sharing what drew you to UT and how that’s going to help you achieve your end goals. Again, this student may have served this prompt better by being more clear about how her UT experience would help her be the change.
How to Write the UT Austin Short Answer Essay #4:
(Optional): Please share background on events or special circumstances that you feel may have impacted your high school academic performance. (maximum 40 lines, or approximately 250-300 words)
Here, you can focus on anything that “impacted your high school academic performance,” including any COVID-19 impacts. Though if you’re applying via the Common App, you’ll also have a box there you can use to address COVID, which we discuss how to use here. And because this section functions similarly to the Additional Info section, you can check out our full guide to the Additional Information section here.
Check out an example of what that looks like.
Example 6:
Health Issue
My fingertip was amputated in a tubing accident during the summer after junior year, which resulted in me having to relearn how to type and take extra time on tests and note-taking. However, I was able to adjust by mastering the hunt-and-peck typing method with my left hand and learning how to manipulate objects with only 9 and ⅔ fingers.
Dropping AP French IV
I became overwhelmed with my amount of advanced classes and coursework, including 3 hours a night from AP French homework. I made the choice to drop AP French in order to balance my coursework in my other classes and my mental health. I learned to respect and honor my limits as well as how to stand up for myself when I am feeling overwhelmed and unhappy.
2020 Spring Quarter Grades
Before my school switched to pass/fail as a result of online learning, we completed our 3rd quarter grading period, which is not included on my transcript. I received the following grades:
AP Physics 1: 91
AP Statistics: 99
Peer Coaching: 100
AP-GT English III: 93
Pre-AP Precalculus: 96
AP US History: 93
(154 words)
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Tips + Analysis
Consider using bullets and section titles for easier scanning. The UT admission team already has a bunch of essays to read (and you’ve got plenty to write). Make it easier on them, and you, but bulleting out the main point you want to convey and organizing them under section titles (like Health Issues and Dropping AP French IV). A great/convenient benefit of this approach is that you don’t have to use full sentences, to save space (especially since, topping off at 300 words, UT’s version is less than half the 650 words the Common App accepts).
Explain any red flags. Do you have gaps in your transcript? Poorer grades you want to explain? This is the place to do it. And it will help give UT admission counselors context as they review your application. A couple words of caution, though: a) try to put a positive spin even on something negative, like a bad grade, perhaps by sharing what you learned from the experience, as this will show maturity and perspective (and will help you avoid sounding like you’re whining), and b) don’t overly explain why, say, you got an A- instead of an A. It may make you seem like a perfectionist obsessed with grades, and that’s not a great look.
Use this space for achievements that wouldn’t fit anywhere else in your application. Like how this student shared the high grades he got before his classes went to pass/fail in the online learning environment during the pandemic. Since those scores are no longer being reported, UT wouldn’t know this otherwise, and it’s a pretty cool thing to share.
Optional (but highly recommended) Expanded Resume
You may choose to submit an expanded résumé offering additional information about all of your achievements, activities, leadership positions, and student employment.
Your résumé should include all your achievements, not just those that didn’t fit on the ApplyTexas or Common Application. That said, if you’re able to list everything on your admissions application, there’s no need to submit a separate résumé.
Here’s what UT Austin says on its site:
“Your résumé should include all your achievements, not just those that didn’t fit on the ApplyTexas or Common App application. That said, if you’re able to list everything on your admissions application, there’s no need to submit a separate résumé.
If you submit a résumé, you should include:
- Details about what each activity involved rather than a general description
- The number of hours per week and weeks per year you spent on each activity”
This expanded resume connects back to what we talked about earlier (in the section on short essay #1 regarding UT Austin’s focus on fit: Because the school places such emphasis on how you fit with your first-choice major, the expanded resume offers another great chance to show the admission team why you belong at their school, and how you fit in the program you want. This is particularly important for impacted majors, such as engineering, but we recommend submitting an expanded resume regardless of your major, and use it to further highlight why you and UT are a great match.
Head here for UT Expanded Resume Tips, including a sample resume/template.
Special thanks to Julia for contributing to this post.
Julia published her first “book” on the elusive Pika in elementary school and has been writing fervently ever since. She’s thrilled to unite her quirky love of grammar and master’s in psychology to help students tell their most meaningful stories. Her favorite punctuation mark is the apostrophe because, in the words of Imagine Dragons, it’s “a symbol to remind you that there’s more to see.”
Top values: Collaboration | Family | Productivity
