The University of Texas at Austin

1. 1 Family under $100,000? Tuition is covered

   The Texas Advance Commitment, in the university's words: "Texas residents entering UT Austin as freshman or transfer students, as well as continuing students with family-adjusted gross incomes (AGIs) of up to $100,000, will have tuition covered with gift monies up to tuition. Students with family AGIs between $100,000 and $125,000 will receive some financial assistance to help offset the cost of their tuition at UT Austin." The $100,000 line is new from fall 2025 — it used to be $65,000, so older advice undersells it. The conditions, all of them: be a Texas resident; submit the FAFSA or TASFA; have demonstrated financial need; be enrolled full-time as a first-time-in-college or transfer student pursuing your first bachelor's degree. There is no separate application — the FAFSA is the application, which is why filing it late is the way people miss this. To renew: "Maintain 2.0 GPA and complete 67% of courses attempted." Freshmen can receive it for up to four years. What it is NOT: it is tuition. Fees, housing, books and food are separate, though the page notes other grant, scholarship, work-study and loan funds exist for those. And "demonstrated financial need" is a real test, calculated from the FAFSA — $100,000 is a ceiling, not an automatic award.

   UT Admissions — Texas Advance Commitment
2. 2 You get one do-over. Once. Ever

   The One-Time Exception is UT-specific and most freshmen have never heard of it until the semester it would have saved. From the General Information catalog: undergraduates "will be allowed to drop a single class or withdraw from the University after the deadline to drop or withdraw for academic reasons under the provisions of the One-Time Exception (OTE). The OTE may be invoked only once during the student's entire university undergraduate program career regardless of the college the student was enrolled in at the time the exception was allowed." Texas One Stop puts it more plainly: "Every undergraduate is allowed one OTE, whether it is used to withdraw from all classes or drop one class. An OTE drop counts as one of your six Q-drops. Once you've used it, you cannot use it again." So it is a real escape hatch — a class going badly in week thirteen does not have to become an F — but it is also a Q-drop, it goes on the transcript as a Q, and it is the only one you get for your whole degree. Ask your advisor before you spend it. The form goes to your dean's office by the last class day; for fall 2026 the regular Q-drop deadline is November 18 and OTE requests are accepted through December 7. It does not apply to graduate, Pharmacy, LBJ School or Law students.

   Catalog — adding and dropping classes (One-Time Exception) Texas One Stop — add or drop a course
3. 3 Retaking a class does not erase the F

   Plenty of schools let a second attempt replace the first in your GPA. UT does not. From the catalog's Repetition of a Course section: "If a student repeats a course and has two or more grades, all grades and all semester hours are used to calculate the University grade point average and to determine the student's scholastic eligibility to remain in school. The official grade in a course is the last one assigned." So the F is still in the average; the retake is added next to it. And in most of the university you cannot even retake a class you passed. The same section: students in "the McCombs School of Business, the Moody College of Communication, the Cockrell School of Engineering, the College of Liberal Arts, the College of Natural Sciences, the School of Nursing, and the College of Pharmacy" may not repeat for credit a course in which they earned a C- or better. The practical version: at UT the time to rescue a grade is DURING the semester — office hours, the Sanger Learning Center, or the One-Time Exception above — not the semester after. This is also the reason tip 4 exists: a repeated course counts twice against the rebate.

   Catalog — evaluation and repetition of a course
4. 4 Finish lean and Texas pays you $1,000

   From the catalog's Tuition Rebates for Certain Undergraduates: "An undergraduate may be eligible for a tuition rebate of up to $1,000 if, at graduation, they have attempted no more than three semester hours beyond the minimum number of hours required for the degree." It is a state programme, so it exists at every Texas public university — but it is decided by choices you make as a freshman. Because "hours attempted" is a wide net: "all courses the student has undertaken, such as transfer credit, courses the student dropped or from which the student withdrew after the date the official enrollment count was taken, developmental courses taken for credit, optional internship and cooperative education courses, courses the student failed, and courses the student repeated." More than nine hours of credit by exam also counts. A change of major, a Q-drop, one failed class — any of them can put you over three. The other conditions: "The student must have been a Texas resident and must have been eligible to pay resident tuition at all times while pursuing the degree"; you must graduate within four calendar years of first enrolling (five for architecture, engineering and other programmes the state has determined take longer); and you have to ask — "submit a request for a rebate in their dean's office when the student files an application for graduation." The request must be in before the official graduation date. Students on Longhorn Fixed Tuition are eligible for an additional $2,500 rebate on top — see the note below before you read that as a reason to opt in.

   Catalog — tuition rebates for certain undergraduates Texas One Stop — post-graduation rebates
5. 5 Upload your textbook. Then ask it questions.

   Attach a PDF — a textbook chapter, a lecture deck, a reading, a problem set — and ask Gus about it in plain language. It reads the file, indexes it against the rest of that course's materials, and answers from the page rather than from the internet. It is not only a lookup tool. Ask it to tutor you through something that has not clicked, to quiz you on the key concepts, or to read your draft and tell you what is weak. Because it is scoped to one course, "what is actually on our reading list" is a question it can answer. And it is still the same app that pulls every deadline out of your syllabi and records your lectures. The chat just knows about all of it.

   Try Gus free

One more thing