Is UT Austin harder to get into than Rice?

Yes. For most applicants, Rice is harder to get into than UT Austin. Rice has a much smaller undergraduate population, a more limited class size, and admissions that are highly selective across the board. UT Austin is also very selective, but its admissions process is shaped by Texas auto-admit rules and by the fact that some majors are far harder to enter than the university overall.

For a student looking at overall university-level selectivity, Rice is the tougher admit. It draws a national and international applicant pool for a relatively small class, so there is less room in the process. A student with excellent grades and scores can still be very competitive at Rice, but the bar is consistently high for nearly everyone.

UT Austin is more complicated because different students experience its selectivity very differently. A high-ranking Texas student may have a clearer path to admission to the university itself through the state’s auto-admit framework. A student applying to Computer Science, Engineering, Business, or other high-demand programs can face a level of competition that feels closer to top private-school admissions, even if UT overall is less selective than Rice.

So in a simple head-to-head comparison, Rice is harder to get into overall. UT Austin can still be extremely difficult, but that difficulty depends much more on whether you are in-state, whether you qualify for automatic admission, and which major you want.