Admissions data at Texas A&M shows a decline in the acceptance rate of applicants in the 2025-26 academic school year, and the current trends predict an even steeper drop for Fall 2026.
A culmination of factors, including the increasing popularity of A&M among both in-and-out-of-state applicants, has led to historic application numbers, and the subsequent competitive selection process is contributing to this growing margin. Prospective students have speculated about the causes of this decline and how this relates to their own chances of acceptance.
Within the last five years, A&M experienced a 34.78% increase in overall applications. The Fall 2021 semester received a total of 66,346 applications, whereas the Fall 2025 semester saw 89,422 total applicants.
Associate Vice President for Enrollment Management and Chief Enrollment Officer Christopher Reed stated that what people are seeing in these admissions statistics are not a decrease in the number of students accepted, but a dramatic increase in the overall applicant pool.
High school students who are in the top 10% of their class receive automatic admission to public universities in Texas, including A&M. For students who apply under holistic review, however, the changing applicant pool requires new approaches to applications.
Reed gave advice on how prospective students applying through holistic review can stand out from the crowd and earn their spot. He highlighted the importance of visiting campus, putting sincere effort into the application and meeting with admissions advisors.
“It is always a good idea to meet with your advisors,” Reed said.
Reed also noted that although SAT and ACT scores are optional, a good score can only improve one’s chances of acceptance.
Some people in online forums contend that A&M’s competitiveness has not grown drastically, and the only figure that has changed is the number of applicants.
“Even if the acceptance rate decreases, that really doesn’t mean it was more competitive, especially at a stats-based university like A&M,” one user wrote. “It’s just more applications by people who didn’t meet the standards, but I doubt median class rank/SAT of accepted applicants has changed significantly.”
Data released by the Office of Academic and Business Performance Analytics reveals that test score trends from previous years tend to fluctuate rather than gradually increase.
The Fall 2022 academic term saw an average SAT score of 1267 with a median score of 1270. The Fall 2023 term experienced a drop in SAT scores with an average of 1257 and a median of 1260, and for Fall 2024, scores rose back up with an average of 1271, bringing the median back to 1270. The average and median ACT scores remained the exact same for all three years at 28.
The increase in averages, while the medians remained stagnant, suggests a bigger pool of outliers on the top end of score statistics.
This indicates that there is a growing number of highly competitive students. However, standardized college admissions tests have become more difficult to measure in recent datasets, especially at a university such as A&M, as these tests are not a requirement for the application process.
Another measure of competitiveness that can be analyzed is the number of automatically admitted students. This number made up 41.76% of enrolled students in Fall 2025, according to A&M data.
This number has also fluctuated rather than having a steady rise or fall, with 2022 totaling the highest enrollment percentage among this category. However, prior to 2021, the automatic admissions standard was for a student to be in the top 25% of their high school class. Lowering the cut-off to the top 10% marked a dramatic shift in A&M’s application restrictions, suggesting a desire to select from a more competitive applicant pool.
Editor’s note: This previous version contained a misleading quote, it has since been clarified.
