For many high school students, preparing for college means more than earning good grades and performing well on standardized tests. It also means participating in extracurricular activities, whether that's joining clubs, competing in sports, volunteering, or pursuing academic interests outside the classroom. But how many extracurricular activities should a [...]
Many Houston-area high school students hope to find themselves amongst the ivy and gothic-adjacent architecture of an elite university. However, traditional formulae for college admissions are often no longer enough. A stratospheric GPA, near-perfect standardized test scores, and laundry list of general extracurriculars are necessary, but insufficient. Admission decisions at [...]
Applications for Fall 2027 entry open August 1, and UT Austin's auto-admit cutoff for this cycle is top 5%. If you're the parent of a rising senior in Houston, the phrase "automatic admission" is probably doing a lot of comforting work right now. It sounds like a finish line. It [...]
For Fall 2027, Rice University is test-optional, but recommends sending test scores. In 2020, the majority of US higher education institutions adopted a test-optional policy for their admission process - meaning applicants were not required to submit ACT or SAT scores. Today, many elite institutions like Harvard, Yale, and Stanford [...]
The second ever Texas Free College Application Week is October 12-18, 2026. During this week all Texas public colleges, including the University of Texas at Austin and A&M College Station, will accept applications via the ApplyTexas website at no charge. The fee waiver will save families about $75 per application, [...]
Every Texas public college, more than 30 in total, grants automatic admission to resident, high-school seniors who meet certain class rank and/or standardized test requirements. In fact, automatic admission is usually the most practical way for high-achieving Texas residents to gain admission to prestigious public colleges like the University [...]
Our updated college applications timeline for the 2026–2027 cycle outlines the essential steps Texas high school students should take from junior fall through senior spring. For most students applying for Fall 2027 college entry, the process began in fall 2025, accelerates during spring and summer 2026, and culminates with [...]
Announcing General Academic's custom-built college admissions tracking app: what it does for students, parents, and counselors. In the run-up to college application deadlines, even families that started organized usually aren't anymore. The Common App is in one browser tab, and the high school's counseling portal in another. The personal statement [...]
What is Automatic Admission at Texas Universities? Texas high school students who excel relative to the rest of their graduating class have the opportunity for automatic acceptance into top public universities such as the University of Texas, Texas A&M, and the University of Houston. All public universities, such as [...]
High school students interested in learning college-level material, boosting their GPAs, and even earning college credit well before getting their acceptance letters should consider taking Advanced Placement (AP) courses or signing up for the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma Programme (DP) if their schools offer them. High scores on AP [...]