We’ve written before about the 40 Acres Scholarship, the premier scholarship offered at UT Austin. Since that time, however, the way the scholarship is applied to and awarded has changed, so we think it’s time for an article updating the information we provide, and giving you the latest scoop on how to best situate your application for the scholarship.
In this article we’ll go over the changes to how you can apply to the 40 Acres Scholarship, and then go over a recent example of an Ivy Scholars student who was awarded this scholarship, and explore the reasons for their success by analyzing their essays. Let’s jump in!
The Changes to the 40 Acres Application
The largest change is that there is no longer a separate 40 Acres Scholarship application at all. Instead, all applications to UT Austin are evaluated by the scholarship committee for their fit for the scholarship. They are still looking for the same base traits in applicants:
- Academic prowess: This scholarship is meant to go to the top applicants to UT Austin. While perfect grades and test scores are not enough on their own, they are the first barometer used to evaluate applicants. Students with poor scores do not have the rest of their application reviewed by the scholarship committee.
- Leadership: Much like UT Austin itself, the 40 Acres Scholarship looks for students who have demonstrated leadership experience through their activities, and who discuss it well in their essays.
- Service: The 40 Acres Scholarship is meant to give back to the broader community at UT Austin, and they want students who will continue this tradition of giving. They want to see how you have given back to communities you are a part of, and that you have a history of volunteering and community engagement.
For all of these traits, the selection committee looks to your activities list and essays to see how you demonstrated them in high school. Your past actions are seen as the best possible predictor for future success in the program, so they are key to winning this scholarship.
Example Application
Now we will go through the essays of a student who was awarded the 40 Acres Scholarship. We will provide each essay, then explain why it appealed to the scholarship committee, and how you can make sure your own essays do so as well.
Describe how your experiences, perspectives, talents, and/or your involvement in leadership activities (at your school, job, community, or within your family) will help you to make an impact both in and out of the classroom while enrolled at UT.
Just before I could walk off the mat, my Taekwondo instructor caught me with an offer to become an assistant instructor. When I nervously accepted, he smiled and asked, “How will you help your students?” I was stumped.
As an eleven-year-old black belt, I was met by an army of eight-year-old white-belts. Rote instructions looped in my head. Do the right thing, say the right thing, stand in the right place.
Over time, I became sensitive to the subtle difficulty of my task: to translate language into movement. The problem was that every kid seemed to speak a different language. A perfectly sensible description of a side-kick to one would produce an awkward leg-shake from another.
My instinct was to double-down, hoping that if I repeated the technique enough, my stubbornness with each jump and spin and pivot of my base foot would compel them to match my movement. Each ineffective attempt forced me to reevaluate. My true task was to respond to what I saw in front of me.
In one student’s language, chambering for a side-kick meant “tuck your knee into your elbow”; in another’s, it meant “point your heel at your target.” It became a kind of cooperative sparring match, bouncing back and forth—a game of detecting the particularities and strengths of each individual as we worked to finally “solve” the kick. Whenever I witnessed a heel snap into a heavy bag, whenever I saw the pieces of balance and timing click into a sharp kihap, it was my reward as much as theirs.
If my instructor were to ask me today, “How would you make an impact at UT?” I would respond without hesitation: by learning the languages of my peers to solve technical and creative problems.
Analysis
This essay demonstrates several key traits about the student. First, that they are willing to assume responsibility when it is offered to them. They did not shirk from duty, but instead stepped up and did their best, in spite of their own doubts and hesitations. Second, it showed how the student acts when in a leadership position. How they interact with those in their charge, and how they ensure that their task is carried out well.
Finally, it demonstrates that the student is capable of introspection and growth. While this is more important to admission for UT Austin generally, it is still an important sign of maturity, and signals to readers that the student will be well positioned to make the most of any opportunity offered to them.
The student describes how they overcame first their own reticence, and then the more practical struggles involved with Taekwondo instruction. Instead of merely stating that they learned to be a leader, they walk the reader through the steps needed to make that happen, and the revelations which occurred to them in the process.
In your own essay, you should describe how your community impacts in the past changed you. This essay is a great chance to show both your involvement in a community, and your leadership within that group. The exact activity or community you discuss matters far less than demonstrating your impact and leadership within it. While this student used Taekwondo, you may write about any activity which is important to you.
Why are you interested in the major you indicated as your first-choice major?
From filling my house with toy trains to binging dinosaur documentaries to daydreaming about a futuristic restaurant empire, as a child, I leapt between a fickle set of obsessions. As one arose, the others faded. My fascination with computer science, however, stuck: I was a fifth-grader armed with a twenty-minute YouTube tutorial and an iPad when I first encountered programming, sitting in a restaurant booth scraping together tic-tac-toe.
With fluidity came the ability to transcribe blurry flashes of ideas into an order, a process, an algorithm. As the underlying structure floats to the surface, semicolons stitch together lines of code to make software. What began as tedious and narrow became dynamic and expressive.
CS is a continuation of my childhood curiosity. I can equally study it for the sake of its own depth as for the breadth of its possibilities. I still leap between interests, now amplifying them in distinctively technical ways. I’ve felt the excitement of realizing the barriers to learning philosophy could be softened by personalization algorithms. Constructing imaginary game worlds, I discover new ways to tell stories, to reflect human agency, to draw emotion from code. I owe the resilience of my fascination with CS to this adaptability. It’s not a straight path but a set of tools—tools that help me channel the flutter of my curiosity.
UT provides the environment to develop strong technical skills along with opportunities for collaboration. The flexibility of the curriculum and its concentrations offer organic exploration. When I’m not diving into the theoretical intricacies of CS, I’ll be synergizing the strengths of a multidisciplinary team to build games and explore interactive visual technology. Outside class, whether I’m mentoring in Code Orange or contributing to the Electronic Game Developers Society, I look forward to adding unique perspectives to a vibrant community.
Analysis
This essay is less a chance to display your leadership or community (though it is possible, depending on how you explored your academic interests). What is most important in this essay is demonstrating intellectual vitality. We have an entire article exploring what intellectual vitality is, but in brief, it is the love of learning and academic exploration for its own sake, and a font of self-guided passion within a student.
This is a key trait the committee, and colleges generally, look for in students. Your grades and test scores are examined to see that you have the necessary aptitude for academic excellence; this essay is used to ensure you have the right outlook on academic exploration. They want to find students with genuine curiosities and passions, who have sought hard to explore them.
What your academic passions are matters less. The student in the essay above has a clear love for computer science, but your essay should be authentic to your own passions. Your goal is for readers to understand what you care about academically, and to demonstrate to them what steps you have taken to explore your interests. If you are able to display a devotion to community or leadership through this essay you can, but as this example shows, doing so is not necessary to the application overall; there are separate essay questions which focus on those topics.
The core purpose of The University of Texas at Austin is, “To Transform Lives for the Benefit of Society.” Please share how you believe your experience at UT-Austin will prepare you to “Change the World” after you graduate.
For an aspiring computer science student, an interest in video games might appear like intellectual Peter Pan Syndrome. Games—fun projects for any intermediate programmer—but shouldn’t we eventually grow up?
Yet, I see untapped potential to leverage technology and further a medium still in its infancy. Life is complicated—riddled with conflicting identities and ambiguous value structures. Games, though, immerse us in a role with defined limitations and abilities. They take a slice of ourselves, magnify it, and show it back to us in a different light. In them, we temporarily accept a simplified model of our agency to gain insight into ourselves.
There’s endless possibility for me to create: a lonely diner on the edge of a black hole, a climb atop ancient ruins whirling in a dream, a hunter’s delusional pursuit of a magical creature—I’m fascinated by the prospect of otherworldly experiences that snapshot the human condition. I want to discover new ways to engineer mechanics that submerge players into the movement of a game.
UT will provide an excellent environment to realize these ambitions with a passionate group of peers in a city brimming with technological development. The CS curriculum offers a strong technical focus with opportunities to dive into game development. Particularly, Professor Toprac’s publications on Control in Video Gaming and Designing technology-enriched cognitive tools align deeply with my interests in games and agency.
Games are part of our digital landscape; they’re the language of agency. In them, we can record who we are, how we live, who we hope to be: a library of the human experience injected into the fabric of our entertainment. The average person will spend thousands of hours playing games. I want to build them with conscience, intent, craftsmanship—games that can shape the formative virtual experiences underpinning the lives of countless people.
Analysis
There are many ways to approach this essay; no single one is correct. In the example above, the student elaborates further on themes of intellectual vitality first seen in their “Why Major” essay. They delve deeper into the possibilities of computer science, and game design specifically, and speak passionately on their future interests.
In addition to this, the student clearly ties their interests to UT Austin. This is important not just for answering the prompt, but for the 40 Acres Scholarship. This scholarship is administered by the Texas Exes, a group of UT Austin Alumni, ones who are understandably proud of the institution, and who are looking for students who will continue its long tradition of excellence.
This does not mean your essay should be filled with effusive praise; instead you should demonstrate that you have looked into UT Austin’s offerings and found ones which will fit well with your needs and interests. This is not something directly judged by the 40 Acres Scholarship, but is in general admissions, and will certainly not hurt your chances at the 40 Acres.
This essay can be another way to display your desire to serve your community, and you should display altruistic intentions within it. We understand the appeal of studying business in order to make a lot of money, but the Texas Exes want students who seek a higher calling, and who actively desire to contribute to the world around them. It is these goals you should express in this essay, whatever form they may take for you.
Final Thoughts
If you are applying to UT Austin, then you are also applying for the 40 Acres Scholarship. While your essays should be aimed primarily at the college itself, they can serve double duty in applying to the scholarship if you write them with intention. This is aided by the fact that the school and scholarship are looking for similar attributes in students, and positioning yourself well for one usually also does so for the other.
Paying for college is a major challenge for many students, but scholarships like 40 Acres can make this task far easier. For more scholarships such as this, see our articles on merit scholarships, honors college scholarships, or financial aid. We understand how challenging this can be for students, and hope these guides give you a place to start.
If you are looking for help applying to UT Austin, or want more personalized advice on how to craft the perfect essays, schedule a free consultation to hear how we can help you. We have a depth of experience helping students achieve their collegiate dreams, and are always happy to hear from you.
