Your Ticket to the Forty Acres: The Unofficial Guide for UT Undergraduate Admissions

Stressing about your University of Texas at Austin undergraduate application?
Ease your worries and increase your chances of gaining admission to your dream school with these winning tips and strategies from former UT Admissions Counselor Kevin Robert Martin. A Fulbright Fellow who graduated Phi Beta Kappa from UT-Austin, Kevin has reviewed and scored thousands of applications.

Use his inside perspective to maximize your admissions chances not just at UT but at selective universities nationwide.

Put yourself in your reviewer’s shoes to better understand this complicated and uncertain process. Kevin shares entertaining stories from visiting hundreds of schools and working with thousands of students.

His comprehensive guide tells readers everything he wishes he could have said when he worked for UT-Austin.

• Learn exactly how UT reviews students for their first-choice major using the Academic and Personal Achievement Index.


• Dispel dozens of myths and misconceptions and understand what really counts.


• Craft compelling Apply Texas essays and build an effective expanded resume by referencing real student applications.


• Explore a data-driven look at how race in admissions, the Abigail Fisher Supreme Court Case, and how the top 7 percent law influences decisions.


• Examine more than twenty charts visualizing seven years of applicant and admitted student data for popular majors like the McCombs School of Business, the Cockrell School of Engineering, the Moody College of Communications, and Computer Science.


• Elevate your application for Business, Plan II, and College of Natural Sciences Honors Programs.


• Find success in the transfer admissions process.