Is University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign harder to get into than UT Austin for undergraduate admissions?

The biggest practical tradeoff is that UT Austin is notably tougher for out-of-state applicants, while UIUC is selective in a more program-by-program way. For a non-Texas resident, UT Austin gives clear priority to in-state students because Texas public universities are built to serve Texas residents first. UIUC also values certain majors very differently, but it does not have that same automatic in-state advantage structure working against out-of-state applicants to the same degree.

So in general, yes: UT Austin is harder to get into than UIUC for an out-of-state student, especially at the university-wide level. That gap becomes even more obvious for high-demand majors at UT like business, engineering, and computer science, where admission can be extremely tight. UIUC can also be very hard for those same areas, especially engineering and CS, but outside the most competitive programs it is often more accessible than UT Austin is for nonresidents.

One reason people get confused is that UIUC and UT Austin both have colleges or majors that are much harder than the overall university. At UIUC, CS, engineering, and business can be a very different admissions landscape from less selective majors. At UT Austin, the same is true, but out-of-state applicants are also facing a smaller share of available seats from the start.

If you are building a list as an out-of-state student, treat UT Austin as the tougher admit overall. UIUC may still be highly competitive depending on your intended major, but UT Austin is the one that is usually more difficult for non-Texas applicants to crack.