The University of Texas at Austin

The University of Texas at Austin is a public research university founded in 1883. It is the flagship of the University of Texas System. The main campus covers about 430 acres just north of the Texas State Capitol and centers on the 307-foot UT Tower. The university draws support from the Permanent University Fund, a state endowment built on oil and gas revenue from public land in West Texas.

The university has 18 colleges and schools. They include the College of Natural Sciences, the Cockrell School of Engineering, the McCombs School of Business, the School of Law, the Moody College of Communication, the Jackson School of Geosciences, the LBJ School of Public Affairs and the Dell Medical School, which opened in 2016. It is especially strong in petroleum engineering, geosciences, accounting and computer science. Research centers include the Texas Advanced Computing Center, the Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences, McDonald Observatory, the Bureau of Economic Geology and the Harry Ransom Center, a humanities archive.

UT Austin enrolls about 53,000 students, and roughly 11,000 of them are graduate students. International students from more than 100 countries make up about 9 percent of enrollment. Nobel laureates on the faculty have included physicist Steven Weinberg and chemist John Goodenough. Former students include news anchor Walter Cronkite, former first lady Laura Bush and Michael Dell, who started his company in a campus dormitory.

The Graduate School runs doctoral and master's programs. PhD students are usually supported through teaching assistant, assistant instructor and research assistant appointments, along with fellowships. Professional degrees include the MBA and the Master of Public Affairs, and there are online master's degrees in computer science, data science and artificial intelligence. The academic year runs on semesters. Austin, the state capital, has about one million residents, and its technology sector offers internships and industry research partners.

In the Grad School Navigator directory, The University of Texas at Austin lists 281 graduate programs across 53 subjects: 137 master's programs and 129 doctoral programs, with the widest choice in education, music and area studies. The University of Texas at Austin holds rank 31 in the GSN Overall University Ranking.