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Posted
6 hours ago, jimmyjazz said:

You have to be selected for CAP, and then a 3.2 gpa at the school you pick (from the list they allow you to pick from) gets you into most of the College of Liberal Arts.  Engineering/business/natural science are longer shots.

@mdmost do NOT rule out your daughter's ability to land a CAP spot.  My son's grades and scores were a long way from impressive, and yet here we are, about 25 credit hours from a degree in Pscyh from UT-Austin.  The essay apparently matters, a lot, along with recommendations.

I would add don’t sleep on work/intern experience in the area of their major.  At least five years ago, that was a big deal.  Someone who would know gave me that advice.  I had a business acquaintance in their chosen field who was kind enough to let them spend a few weeks working at his business during the summer for no pay. 
I was at a party and happened to meet the dean of the school they were wanting to admit to.  Of course I took the opportunity to mention my kids and they offered to meet with them and have them meet with a professor.  It never hurts for people to see how much they want to get in. They even attended a class which also inspired them when it came time to write essays and resumes.  My impression was that the colleges will do those meetings for anyone who asks.  Even if it played no part in the decision, it did help my kids to focus in on what major they wanted within the college and focus their extra curricular time on meaningful activities. 
My kids went to a large competitive high school and did ok but definitely not better than top 20%. If you understand how UT does the holistic review you know how you can make up some ground in these other areas. 
Good luck to all. 

Posted (edited)
10 hours ago, Texas Jeff said:

Longhorn Band chances depend on what instrument he plays.  Some instruments take almost all the folks that show up for the band week before school, some make significant cuts.  It is based on space available in the section and how many people try out.

If he does not make LHB in year one, there are other options like Pep Band (which is the basketball/volleyball/whatever else band), along with other wind ensembles and orchestras.  If that does happen, please encourage him to try something just to stay in a musical group and maybe try out again in a future year.

College band is a great experience, and it is very different than being in a Texas high school marching band.  Very social.  Not competitive.  No band parents required, the kids and directors do all of the work.

He plays trumpet. He will keep at it, in fact depending on whether UTSA will let CAP students (if he gets it and can make it to UTSA) in their marching band then he’s def doing that.

he’s considering a double major already, I’ll push the music major across to him as well.  He made first of four bands in his high school as a sophomore but he’s not in the top of the first band even as a senior mostly because he’s a well rounded kid and half the band year he’s got white gloves on and his trumpet is collecting dust.

Edited by troph
  • Hook 'Em 1
Posted (edited)

His other schools he’s looking at all have marching bands too except one - CU, Oregon, Washington, Cal, UCLA, UCSB. He’s dropping Michigan and Georgia. We wanted to add Arky but I can’t. He didn’t want to add Tenn. Fla never caught his interest. no interest in the east coast at all. UTSA is his absolute fail safe. He’s mindful of cost and probably won’t go to a CA school, and is thinking CU and Oregon are likely. 

Edited by troph
Posted

I got a kid who just graduated UT Nursing (all 4 years) and then one of my twins is headed to UTSA this fall on CAP with designs on either Economics or McCombs if he can pull off that trick. He had plenty of other options but he was pretty much ride or die with Texas (his nickname on his HS baseball team was Bevo)  We live in DFW and seems like a lot of CAP kids up here try to land UTA but he was deadset on being closer to the mothership  

Two things for those of you talking about UTSA for CAP that I can share so far:

1  It may not quite be a “buying Taylor Swift tickets when they come out” situation but it isn’t far off. CAP spots at UTSA are very limited and were gone in a matter of a couple minutes when the CAP agreement opened this spring.  This past spring that was 6pm on a Friday night in early March so you need to be prepared for that going in. 
 

2. On the 30 hours. Unlike most of the other CAP schools UTSA requires you to take it in this order. 6 hours summer, 9 hours fall, 15 hours spring.  Summer is online (my son actually started college the last 4-5 days we were in Italy) so not like your kid has to be in SA but again something to factor in. Also consider a fall load of 9 hours isn’t exactly “busy” so talk with your kiddo about how to manage and make best use of time. 
 



 

 

  • Hook 'Em 2
Posted

Interesting on the 6, 9, 15 plan at UTSA.  Esp. the 9, which is not officially a full-time student.

Will they allow for 12?  Perhaps it is different today, but 20+ years ago the difference between full-time and part-time student was meaningful for scholarships, family benefits, tax deductions, etc.  Perhaps that no longer applies...

Posted
15 minutes ago, Surly Bevo said:

I got a kid who just graduated UT Nursing (all 4 years) and then one of my twins is headed to UTSA this fall on CAP with designs on either Economics or McCombs if he can pull off that trick. He had plenty of other options but he was pretty much ride or die with Texas (his nickname on his HS baseball team was Bevo)  We live in DFW and seems like a lot of CAP kids up here try to land UTA but he was deadset on being closer to the mothership  

Two things for those of you talking about UTSA for CAP that I can share so far:

1  It may not quite be a “buying Taylor Swift tickets when they come out” situation but it isn’t far off. CAP spots at UTSA are very limited and were gone in a matter of a couple minutes when the CAP agreement opened this spring.  This past spring that was 6pm on a Friday night in early March so you need to be prepared for that going in. 
 

2. On the 30 hours. Unlike most of the other CAP schools UTSA requires you to take it in this order. 6 hours summer, 9 hours fall, 15 hours spring.  Summer is online (my son actually started college the last 4-5 days we were in Italy) so not like your kid has to be in SA but again something to factor in. Also consider a fall load of 9 hours isn’t exactly “busy” so talk with your kiddo about how to manage and make best use of time. 
 



 

 

ChatGPT told us about how hard the timing is on UTSA. Didn’t know about the course load cadence but we have looked at the course selection and we can make it work even with 27 hours of credit coming out of HS.

Posted

My son has a number of hours between AP credit and Dual Credit classes he took in HS that he is trying to make work.  He may lose the opportunity to use some of them here or there, but the expense of those was fairly negligible to us in the grand scheme of things.  Whatever works when all is said and done will work and be gravy.  He's going to roll into UT with 30 hours on the books because CAP makes you do that, so at the very least, he will be "on schedule".

Regarding the 9-hour fall requirement, I believe you can take up to 12 (you still have to complete 15 in the spring and 6 in the summer). However, in our situation, due to the aforementioned credits, he does not need to cram in more UTSA work when it is probably not necessary.  

  • Hook 'Em 1
Posted
7 minutes ago, troph said:

ChatGPT told us about how hard the timing is on UTSA.

LOL yea my wife pulled that off for him.  He was at a pre-district baseball game across the metroplex, and I was down in Austin for the last dad's weekend with my graduating daughter's sorority.  She had the wifi triple-checked, multiple laptops open, the whole bit...

  • Drool 1
Posted
6 minutes ago, Surly Bevo said:

LOL yea my wife pulled that off for him.  He was at a pre-district baseball game across the metroplex, and I was down in Austin for the last dad's weekend with my graduating daughter's sorority.  She had the wifi triple-checked, multiple laptops open, the whole bit...

We will have an army on that one. Once had to have and I mean HAD TO HAVE reservations to The French Laundry in a specific 3 day window and we had 4 people dialing landlines and cells simultaneously. We got it, actually I got it.

Posted (edited)
1 hour ago, Surly Bevo said:

I got a kid who just graduated UT Nursing (all 4 years) and then one of my twins is headed to UTSA this fall on CAP with designs on either Economics or McCombs if he can pull off that trick. He had plenty of other options but he was pretty much ride or die with Texas (his nickname on his HS baseball team was Bevo)  We live in DFW and seems like a lot of CAP kids up here try to land UTA but he was deadset on being closer to the mothership  

Two things for those of you talking about UTSA for CAP that I can share so far:

1  It may not quite be a “buying Taylor Swift tickets when they come out” situation but it isn’t far off. CAP spots at UTSA are very limited and were gone in a matter of a couple minutes when the CAP agreement opened this spring.  This past spring that was 6pm on a Friday night in early March so you need to be prepared for that going in. 
 

2. On the 30 hours. Unlike most of the other CAP schools UTSA requires you to take it in this order. 6 hours summer, 9 hours fall, 15 hours spring.  Summer is online (my son actually started college the last 4-5 days we were in Italy) so not like your kid has to be in SA but again something to factor in. Also consider a fall load of 9 hours isn’t exactly “busy” so talk with your kiddo about how to manage and make best use of time. 
 



 

 

So as someone who got his daughter Taylor Swift tickets and is pretty decent at getting Disneyland dining options at the crack of dawn, I could have a chance?

Is it you are offered CAP and then the campus selection is right then or is it later after you accept the offer?

We went on a drive out to Tyler to look at azaleas and just did a drive around UT-Tyler just to see if that's the fallback option if she was offered CAP. Very small but if you're only doing a year, not terrible. I don't think UTA would be a dealbreaker for mine since we live in Dallas. UTSA would be the most ideal but I get why that's the hardest to pull off. 

She has a good number of AP credits right now so I guess we'd have to navigate how not to lose those. It's interesting with the summer work. She's taking some online classes with Dallas College right now. I was admitted into UT in the summer of 94 as a provisional student. I was a dumbass who slacked off when I could've just worked a little bit harder to get automatic acceptance back then. Decent grades but just below the cutoff for automatic. I also didn't take the SAT seriously. I had to take a full load in the summer of 94 and didn't manage the GPA that was required to be fully admitted. I then had to decide if I was going to slink back home in shame to attend community college in Dallas or try to get back into UT at ACC. I chose the latter and I'm glad I did but I'm happy they don't offer that program any longer. I definitely missed out on making friends and the freshman experience so I am cautious to have her go through that. As I said upthread, she's had something similar her freshman year of high school so that also plays into whether she would want to do CAP if offered. She's not as gung ho about Texas as your kid. She's been there with her UT On Ramps English class but it wasn't a full tour. I may drive her down and we do the full thing in the Fall. I can show her all the places her mom and I went, the dorm her mom stayed in, the new development that was once my old apartment on Nueces. 

Edited by mdmost
Posted (edited)

I was a complete fuck up and did the ACC for 24 credits over 2 years and got the transfer back when it was automatic with a 3.5 and 24 hours. I love the back door. 

but then I put it into gear and finished with a 3.82 and then 13th in my law school class. Fuck you Ms Helm (8th grade math teacher) and Prof whatever your name was for contracts (high A both semesters). 

Edited by troph

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