Is UT Austin harder to get into than NYU for undergraduates?

For most out-of-state applicants, UT Austin is harder to get into than NYU. The biggest reason is that UT Austin must automatically admit top Texas students under state law, which leaves far fewer seats for applicants from outside Texas. NYU is also highly selective, but it does not have that same built-in residency pressure, so the comparison changes a lot depending on where you live.

If you are a Texas resident, the picture is more mixed. UT Austin can be more accessible for strong in-state students because of the automatic admission policy for qualifying students, though admission to a specific major can still be much tougher than admission to the university overall. In that situation, NYU may feel similarly selective or even harder for some applicants, especially without a major admissions hook.

If you are not from Texas, UT Austin often becomes the tougher admissions target. Out-of-state applicants are competing for a relatively limited portion of the class, and UT Austin is especially constrained because so many places are effectively reserved for Texas students. That makes the university-wide admit rate less useful unless you separate in-state from out-of-state.

NYU is still very difficult to enter and draws a huge national and international applicant pool, so it is not meaningfully “easy” in this comparison. But when people say UT Austin is harder, they are often talking about the out-of-state reality, not a simple overall comparison.