Univ of Texas Undergrad Film Program

[timely]

Hi everyone, I'm new here. I'm the mom of a high school sophomore who hopes to attend a "good" university film program. He is homeschooled, so not only am I his mom and teacher, I am also the guidance counselor. I've been studying up on USC, UCLA, and FSU. We'v also started looking into the University of Texas and I wondered if anyone here is familiar with their program.

I was looking at UT's Radio-TV-Film (RTF) site yesterday trying to find admissions statistics. I didn't find that, but I did find that they have 900 (!) undergraduates in RTF. I know that UT's school has a very good reputation, yet it looks like it might not be nearly as selective as other programs. For what it's worth, the RTF program there appears to be lighter on production courses than other universities. Has anyone looked into UT? We live in Texas, so our son should have a very good chance of being admitted to UT. I just wondered if getting into the film school is a separate process, as it is most places.

 

[monty_python]

hello there seems no one replied, but hopefully my advise is still needed or not...

I applied to UT as a freshmen and on the online application i chose RTF as my first major. The good news was that I was admitted to UT but not in RTF so I was automatically placed into Undeclared - Liberal Arts. No worries since it gave me a chance to take classes that i needed to take. But I'm still trying to apply as an Internal Transfer to RTF. It is going to be my second year at UT and I still have a chance to get in, eventhough I was declined twice (first as an entering freshmen and second time as an undergrad).

As for your son, I believe, if he's College Admission Application is par to their standards he'll be accepted into UT, but the College of Communications has their own criteria although some students got into the program because of their excellent grades, scores, etc (unlike moi) but they later decide to change majors (which makes me mad since I could have made it my first year...) So there is no separate application to get into RTF as an entering freshmen, but there is if you're an undergraduate wanting to change/transfer majors. It's alot of competition too.

Here are some very helpful links:
http://rtf.utexas.edu/undergraduate/admissions/index.html
http://rtf.utexas.edu/undergraduate/admissions/internal.html

Also, if your son doens't get into USC as an entering freshmen, but would like to attend USC. There might be a way for him to be accepted into RTF at UT and then transfer as an undergrad into USC Cinema-Televison program. A friend of mine did that, but I'm not sure how she did it...

hope that helped.

 

[timely]

Monty, Thanks so much! That really does help. I'm really encouraging my son to work on keeping his grades high and prepare hard for the SAT. This is quite a job as he'd rather be writing screenplays and making movies!

 

[BOG]

UT seemed to work out fine for Matthew Mcconaughey and his friend/producer Gus Gustawes who produced Sahara.