How does UT Austin admissions difficulty compare to WashU for undergraduate applicants?

WashU is typically harder to get into overall for undergraduate applicants, while UT Austin can be especially difficult in a different way because of Texas residency rules and major-specific admission. WashU reviews applicants from a national pool and is widely seen as one of the more selective private universities in the country. UT Austin is also highly selective, but its process is shaped heavily by state policy, automatic admission for many top Texas students, and very competitive entry to certain colleges and majors.

One major difference is who you are competing against. At WashU, everyone is evaluated in one private-university applicant pool, and the bar is high across the board. At UT Austin, in-state and out-of-state applicants do not face the same landscape. Texas residents, especially those eligible for automatic admission under state rules, have a clearer path to the university itself, although not necessarily to their first-choice major.

Another key difference is that UT Austin can be more unpredictable by program. Admission to the university does not guarantee admission to the most sought-after majors, and fields like business, engineering, and computer science are notably tougher than the university as a whole. WashU also has selective academic divisions, but the admissions conversation is usually less dominated by state residency and auto-admit mechanics.

So in broad terms, WashU is the tougher admit overall for the average applicant nationwide. UT Austin may feel equally hard or even harder in practice if you are out of state or targeting one of its most competitive majors, because the available space is tighter and the process is less uniform than many students expect.