Which is harder to get into: UT Austin or the University of Michigan?

The University of Michigan is usually considered harder to get into for the average applicant, especially if you are applying from outside that state. UT Austin is also very competitive, but its process is shaped heavily by Texas residency rules and automatic admission policies. That means the answer can shift depending on whether you are an in-state Texas student, an out-of-state applicant, and which major you want.

For a student who is not from Texas and is comparing the two in broad terms, Michigan often feels tougher because it attracts a huge national and international pool and does not have UT Austin’s Texas-focused admission structure. Michigan is highly selective across many colleges and majors, and out-of-state applicants face especially strong competition.

UT Austin is a little trickier to summarize because Texas law gives automatic admission to many top Texas students, though not always directly into their first-choice major. That makes UT Austin more accessible for some in-state applicants than Michigan would be, but it can still be extremely hard for non-Texas students and for applicants targeting popular programs like business, engineering, or computer science.

If you want the simplest overall answer, Michigan is more often viewed as the harder admit in a general head-to-head comparison. But for a high-achieving Texas resident, UT Austin may be more attainable overall, while for certain capped or highly sought-after UT majors, getting the major you want can be just as hard or harder than getting into Michigan itself.