Is UT Austin or Dartmouth harder to get into overall?

Dartmouth is harder to get into overall. It admits a much smaller share of applicants than UT Austin, and its applicant pool is nationally and internationally self-selecting, with very strong academic records across the board. UT Austin is highly selective too, but its overall admission picture is shaped by Texas’s automatic-admission system for eligible in-state students.

For Dartmouth, there is no in-state admission advantage or statutory pathway comparable to UT Austin’s. Applicants are evaluated in a very competitive private-college pool, so even outstanding grades, rigorous coursework, and activities do not make admission predictable.

UT Austin can be exceptionally difficult for applicants seeking high-demand majors, especially from outside Texas, but Dartmouth remains the more difficult institution to enter in the broad, all-applicant sense. A Texas student with automatic admission may have a materially clearer route to UT Austin than to Dartmouth; an out-of-state applicant may experience UT Austin as much more selective than its aggregate profile suggests.