Editor's note: Expensive moves and surprising restaurant news lead this round of top stories. Read on for more of the week's most popular headlines.
1. Austin declared one of the world's most expensive places to move. So you want to move to Austin? It'll cost you. In fact, a study from online moving platform Movinga says Austin is one of most expensive cities to move to in the world.
2. This new Tarrytown home boasts a big basement surprise. This new Tarrytown home, at 3612 Enfield Rd., has a creative solution for Central Austin living: a basement suite.
3. Austin's giant indoor shooting range targets new opening date. A new state-of-the-art gun range has targeted an opening date. The Range at Austin will open February 1.
4. This is how much Austin rents will rise through 2020. In the Austin area, the "rent is too damn high" refrain promises to grow a bit louder over the next few years. A new report predicts average apartment rents in the region will rise 11 percent in the next three years.
5. Two surprising Austin eateries rank among 100 best places to eat in the U.S. A couple of Austin restaurants are on Yelp's fourth annual list of Top 100 Places to Eat — and they may surprise you.
HIGHER EDUCATION
Texas students aiming to enroll at UT Austin during the fall 2026 semester will face a higher hurdle. During a UT Faculty meeting on September 16, university president Jay Hartzell announced that students will soon need to be in the top five percent of their high school graduating class to be guaranteed admission.
The change comes as enrollment demand continues to rise among Texas students. UT continues to be one of the most coveted universities in the state, spurred by reports like a May Forbes ranking listing the Austin campus and Rice University as the state's two "new Ivies."
Currently, UT grants automatic admission to the top six percent of Texas high school classes, a detour from a 1997 law requiring public universities to admit the top 10 percent of Texas high school graduates. A 2009 rework of the legislation gave UT some latitude, mandating that 75 percent of its first-year classes must be automatically admitted.
Since then, UT has tweaked the threshold based on overwhelming applications while maintaining the 75 percent rule. In 2017, the school changed the threshold from seven percent to six. Applications continue to set records. UT received approximately 73,000 undergraduate solicitations for the fall 2024 semester.
In a statement, A UT spokesperson said the change was needed given the unprecedented demand.
"UT Austin is committed to continuing to provide world-class classroom and research experiences for our students, even while we are facing record demand," the spokesperson wrote. "That demand has been driven both by the success and growth of Texas, and by greater interest in UT among the state's best high-school students. We see no signs that our demand will substantially fall and revising our auto-admit percentage to 5 [percent] will allow us to continue to meet the state's requirement that 75 [percent] of the Texas residents in each freshman class are admitted based on high-school class rank."
More information about automatic admissions is available at utexas.edu.
