• If you participate in CAP, you don’t have to apply for admission to the UT System university you select to attend during your freshman year. Simply complete the CAP agreement to let us know that you want to participate.
• If you decide not to participate in CAP, you’ll have to apply to the college or university you want to attend as a freshman if you haven’t yet done so.

• If you successfully complete your CAP requirements, you’ll be guaranteed the right to return to UT Austin.
• If you don’t participate in CAP and later decide that you want to apply for transfer admission to UT Austin, you’ll receive no guarantee of admission. You’ll have to compete with all other transfer applicants, and your CAP offer will not be considered as part of the decision process.

• To be able to enroll at UT Austin, you must earn a 3.2 GPA during your CAP year.
• Some transfer applicants with GPAs above 3.2 do not get admitted to UT Austin. Again, there is no guarantee of admission for any GPA for transfer students who do not participate in CAP.

• As a CAP student, you’ll select from courses that have been approved for transfer to UT Austin. That means that if you complete the program successfully, you’ll return to UT Austin with at least 30 hours of transferable coursework.
• If you enroll as a freshman at a college or university outside CAP, you’ll select courses without any guarantee that they’ll transfer to UT Austin. Some online resources are available to help students select courses for future transfer at some colleges and universities in Texas, but there is no guarantee that they’ll transfer or apply to the degree that you eventually pursue. Some students do an excellent job of selecting courses that transfer to UT Austin, but some are disappointed to learn that some of the courses they took will not help them complete their degree requirements.

• If you successfully complete the CAP requirements, you won’t have to apply for transfer admission to UT Austin at the end of your freshman year. You’ll simply submit an official transcript of your freshman coursework to us, and we’ll take it from there.
• If you decline your CAP offer, you’ll have to apply for transfer admission if you ever decide that you’re interested in attending UT Austin in the future.

You must enroll in and complete at least one math course beyond College Algebra (Math 301) during the fall or spring semester of your CAP year. If you are not prepared to enroll in College Algebra (at a minimum) during the fall semester of your CAP year, then you will not be able to fulfill the minimum CAP math requirement within the available two-semester timeframe. This will disqualify you from enrolling at UT Austin.

The approved CAP course listings for each UT System school offer a large number of courses from which freshmen may choose. (Go to approved course lists now.) Most students find plenty of courses in which to enroll during their fall and spring semesters. However, students who have earned a high number of AP or IB credits in high school may have difficulty finding courses from the approved CAP course lists. If, after reviewing the approved course listing, you find there are not enough available courses to complete the 30 hour requirement, then CAP is not the best option for you. 

You would be better served attending college elsewhere as a regular freshman and, after attaining 30 college credits, apply for transfer to UT Austin for your sophomore year. Having lost your guarantee by not enrolling in CAP you will have to compete for a space with the transfer applicant pool, but your freshman year will be more academically challenging and productive.

Students who successfully complete the CAP requirements during their freshman year are guaranteed admission as an “undeclared major” in the School of Undergraduate Studies. However, many CAP students are interested in applying to other majors at UT Austin, like business, engineering and communication.

The UT System institution you select for your freshman year will provide courses that will transfer as part of the university’s core curriculum, but they may not all serve as prerequisite courses for some majors at UT Austin. The participating CAP universities cannot guarantee that the courses you take as a freshman will help you to prepare for transfer into the McCombs School of Business, for example.

CAP students can ask to be considered in the transfer applicant pool for any major without jeopardizing their automatic admission into the School of Undergraduate Studies. Admission to some majors outside of the School of Undergraduate Studies is highly competitive. If you will be happy at UT Austin only if you’re admitted to one of our most competitive majors, then you should consider attending a college or university where your pathway to your desired major is more certain.