The University of Texas at Dallas

Public · Moderately Selective · TX

Photo: Thenabster126 (CC BY-SA 4.0)

School data & stats

TypePublic

LocationTX · South

SettingUrban

Undergrads21,751

Student:faculty23:1

Outcomes

4-yr grad rate59.5%

6-yr grad rate75.7%

Drop-out rate10%

Study abroad—

Cost

In-state tuition$15k

Out-of-state tuition$40k

Application fee—

Community

Racial diversity79.4%

Gender diversity43.6%

International5.5%

Identity—

Overview

UT Dallas is a young, fast-rising public university in Richardson, at the heart of the Dallas tech corridor, with roots tracing directly back to a research center founded by Texas Instruments' co-founders. The academic culture is notably more studious than rah-rah — there is no football team, and campus identity centers on academics and competitive intellectual activities, chess most visibly, rather than athletics or Greek life.

Academics

Computer science and engineering, housed in the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science, named for a TI co-founder, and business through the Naveen Jindal School of Management are the strongest programs, directly reflecting the university's origins and its location inside a major tech corridor. The student body skews heavily STEM and international, and the academic culture is intense and achievement-oriented, with research opportunities genuinely available to motivated undergraduates given the university's research-institute lineage.

Campus & student life

Without football, campus life organizes around academic and competitive pursuits — the chess program is nationally dominant and a genuine, longstanding point of campus identity, recruiting internationally titled players much like a traditional athletic program recruits athletes. The Richardson/Dallas setting gives easy access to a large tech-industry job market for internships and part-time work during the school year.

Getting in

UT Dallas is known for offering generous merit scholarships to attract high-achieving students who might otherwise choose more expensive private universities, and admission emphasizes academic strength, particularly STEM preparation, over extracurricular breadth or athletic recruiting. Its automatic and competitive merit-scholarship tiers, tied fairly directly to academic record, are a significant part of why it draws so many high-achieving Texas students away from private alternatives.

After graduation

Computer science and engineering graduates have strong pipelines into the Dallas-area and national tech industry, aided directly by the university's Texas Instruments-linked origins and its location inside the tech corridor those origins helped build. The Callier Center for Communication Disorders also gives speech-language pathology and audiology students an unusually well-known clinical and research home for a university this young.

Worth knowing

Students should know upfront that the culture is academically intense and non-traditional in its social life — there's no football, and prestige chess and STEM competition fill a cultural role at UT Dallas that athletics fill elsewhere. A student looking for a big-Greek-life, big-athletics undergraduate experience should look elsewhere; one looking for serious STEM peers and generous merit aid will find both here.

utdallas.edu ↗

Admissions

Acceptance rate65.1%

Enrolled mid-50%SAT 1160–1410 · ACT 24–32

Test policyoptional

Rec letters0

Deadlines (2026–27 cycle)

Regular decisionMay 1

AdmissionRolling

Verified from the school’s admissions page ↗

Applying (2026-27 cycle)

Apply through Common App or ApplyTexas.

Priority / scholarshipDec 1

Verified from the school’s admissions pages ↗