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Originally Posted by Country_Mouse
My 17 year old applying to UT Austin. Any tips?
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I don't know that I've got a lot to offer. Since my daughter was a grad student there, her experience was probably a lot different than the typical undergrad student. We got her an apartment about 10 miles from campus in the arboretum area of northwest Austin. That daily commute prepared her for the commute she does now from a Dallas suburb to downtown every day.
That one bedroom apartment in the arboretum area was $850 per month. That was 20 gran over two years. Housing near the campus is very expensive, and most of the places are dumps. I have no idea what the dorms are like.
The biggest problem she had at UT was parking. Parking is always an issue for everybody there. As a teaching assistant, she had some kind of faculty parking pass, but she was never able to really use it because the lots were always full. She wound up parking most days at the baseball field on the other side of I-35 from the campus, and riding a shuttle back to the campus area. The parking situation may be better for students that live on campus. I don't know. We were told that on the days of football games, all students must remove their cars from the campus to make room for the football game attendees. I have no idea where they expect those kids to go.
We made frequent visits to Austin. I learned to hate the city. If you like to drink, Austin is a nice place to live because there are bars everywhere. I like to drink, but I still hated Austin anyway, but of course, I hate all big cities.
My daughter loved shopping for groceries at HEB. HEB is one of the best things about Austin. I wish we had one around here. We've heard a lot of rumblings that HEB will be expanding into the northeast Texas area, which is where we live.
One word of warning: Austin has one of the most radical grocery bag bans in the nation. I could editorialize on how misguided that law is, but I learned last week that we are not allowed to discuss politics on this forum.