Announcing Merit-First Admissions
College admission should be earned—not inherited, bought, or gamed.
College admissions are unjust.
Not just biased. Not just broken. Unjust.
Students spend high school anxiously stacking their résumés with hollow activities, then collect generic recommendation letters and outsource their essays to tutors or AI. Admissions at elite colleges now come down to who you know, your identity group, or how well you play the game.
This system rewards manipulation, not merit. It selects for conformity, not character.
That’s why we’re introducing the University of Austin’s new admissions policy:
If you score 1460+ on the SAT, 33+ on the ACT, or 105+ on the CLT, you will be automatically admitted, pending basic eligibility and an integrity check. Below that threshold, you’ll be evaluated on your test scores, AP/IB results, and three verifiable achievements, each described in a single sentence.
That’s it.
We care about two things: Intelligence and courage.
Intelligence to succeed in a rigorous intellectual environment (we don't inflate grades). Courage to join the first ranks of our truth-oriented university.
College admission should be earned—not inherited, bought, or gamed. At the University of Austin, your merit earns you a place—and full tuition scholarship.
This is so refreshing. Please keep up the great work UATX.
I’d like to see more on what exactly is an “integrity check”? Furthermore, while I generally am in support of merit being an important factor, I’m skeptical of standardized tests being the best indicator for what y’all are looking for. You want change makers, original thinkers, people who push into new and interesting directions, those that challenge the existing standards and still succeed. While I’m sure you’ll find them in some that do well on those tests, you might be inundated with people who do well conforming to the standards and miss on our others who would better contribute to your mission by the fact of auto-admission taking the capacity from those who might make it the other way.