Is UT Austin or the University of Michigan more selective for undergraduate admissions?

For overall undergraduate admissions, the University of Michigan is typically the more selective school for the average applicant, especially if you are applying from outside its home state. UT Austin is also very competitive, but its process is shaped heavily by Texas residency rules and automatic admission policies, which makes simple side by side comparisons tricky.

Michigan reviews applicants holistically across the board, while UT Austin reserves a large share of seats for Texas residents and automatically admits many in-state students based on class rank under state policy. That means UT Austin can be much harder for out-of-state applicants than people expect, even though it may not look uniformly more selective overall.

For a Texas resident with strong class rank, UT Austin can be more accessible because of the in-state admissions structure. But for someone looking at the broad national picture without that in-state advantage, Michigan is usually viewed as the tougher admit in a more consistent way.

If your goal is a simple comparison, the cleanest answer is that Michigan is generally more selective overall, while UT Austin can feel especially selective in certain applicant groups, particularly out-of-state and for popular majors like business, engineering, and computer science.