Who should I pick as my recommenders? Can I have professional references?

Three letters of reference are required, but you may provide up to 5 references. Professional references are accepted. Your letter-writers should be able to speak to your CS abilities and should emphasize research experience and academic achievements, particularly in computer science.

Will letter writers receive a duplicate request from ApplyTexas?

You may submit your recommenders’ contact information to both sites - the information submitted to the ApplyTexas site will be collected for the University’s records, however your recommenders are only contacted via the information you provided to the CS supplement site. They will not receive a duplicate request from ApplyTexas.

How do I check the status of my letters? My letter writers haven’t received requests yet.

Recommenders must upload their letters to an online portal; submission instructions will be emailed to your recommenders after you provide their contact information to the CS Department Supplement. An initial email and a reminder are sent automatically. Some email systems filter our email requests as spam/junk. Please ask your letter writers to set any spam/junk filters to receive email from csadmis@cs.utexas.edu. 

You may view the status of your letters or queue a new request to be sent by logging in at here and clicking “REVIEW MY INFO"

Our system sends out the letter requests once a day in an overnight batch - “Request Pending” means that the letter request will be sent out in the next batch. “We asked for a letter” means that a letter request was emailed to the recommender. Once your recommender has submitted their letter, you will see it indicated under their name that the letter has been received.

Your CS supplement does not need to be “submitted” in order for your recommenders to be contacted, and you may submit your application before all of your recommendations have arrived.

How do I update my list of recommenders?

You may update your recommenders by logging in at http://apply.cs.utexas.edu/grad. Updates cannot be made to the ApplyTexas application, but this will not cause any issues. We only use the information you provide to the CS Department Supplement to contact your recommenders.

When updating your recommenders, please *remove* the recommender you no longer wish contacted and then add the new recommender. Up to five letters of recommendation are permitted.

Can my recommenders submit letters through Interfolio?

We do not accept materials through Interfolio. Recommenders must upload their letters to an online portal; submission instructions will be emailed to them at the address you provide in your application. 

When are letters due? Will you still consider my application if a letter of recommendation is late or missing? Will you review late letters?

Letters of recommendation should be received by December 20 (17:00 CST) for full consideration, however we will continue to accept letters throughout the evaluation process. Your application will still be considered with late or missing letters of recommendation. Late information won't be included in our initial ranking process but will be available to our review committee during their deliberations. If the admissions committee has already reviewed your application before you make changes, it is not guaranteed that your application will be reviewed again.