For all matters relating to University admittance, you must contact the Office of Admissions at MAI 7, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas 78712. That office can provide you with an admission application and university catalogs. We suggest that you order the University catalog and the College of Communication catalog, of which the Department of Radio-TV-Film is a part. The catalogs include information in specific detail concerning the requirements for a degree at this university and other pertinent information about the courses and options available to University of Texas students. The Departmental brochure you are currently reading contains the most up-to-date information about degree requirements; you should check with the RTF Department regularly about degree requirement changes. A student has the option of fulfilling the requirements listed in the catalog at the time of admission to UT or the requirements which take effect after admission. The admission application is free, although there is a fee required to submit your application to the University; the catalogs are available for a small fee. You may contact the Office of Admissions by phone at 512-471-1711.
Coursework from a community college or 2-year college will only transfer as lower division to UT. Although a course in a community college or 2-year college or 4-year college may be the same as an upper division course at UT, if that course is not considered upper division at the institution where you took it, then it will not be considered upper division at UT. However, if you have taken a course which is the equivalent of a UT upper division RTF course, the RTF undergraduate advisor may be able to give you lower division credit for the course or make some other arrangement so that you need not repeat coursework. This problem particularly occurs with transferred production and writing courses.
If you are considering transferring to University of Texas and have questions about the transferability of courses other than those specifically in the Radio-TV-Film Department, contact UT's Office of Admissions and ask for information concerning transfer work from your school/college. The RTF undergraduate advisor does not have the information available to determine how non-RTF courses will transfer.
Students must maintain a University grade point average (GPA) of 2.25 and an RTF GPA of 2.0 to be eligible to request consent for upper division RTF courses. However, due to the large number of students declaring RTF as their major, competition has increased and the minimum GPA requirements do not guarantee acceptance into a course. If instructors select students based on grade point average, the minimum GPA requirements may not be sufficient to compete against very high GPAs of other students. For some areas in RTF the competition for courses is very high. Critical/ cultural, screenwriting and production courses are highly sought after; students attending UT primarily for courses in these areas must consider the intense competition and make suitable arrangements (either keep an excellent grade point average or consider an alternative degree plan).
The main listings/headings in the information brochure and catalog primarily reflect general topic headings rather than specific courses since specific course titles and content may differ from one semester to the next depending upon which instructors teach within a topic and each instructor's decision as to what that semester's focus will be. Representative specific course descriptions for each area and topic, taken from previous semester schedules, are provided in this brochure to give you an idea of the scope and diversity of coursework available for each topic. Each semester's course schedule, sold in area bookstores, lists the specific courses taught that semester. Course descriptions are posted by the department each semester.
Although students are not required to take all the classes offered in an area, production faculty tend to admit students to the introductory course of a sequence who they think will remain for the whole sequence. However, as mentioned, individual faculty decide who to admit to their classes; there are no set rules or guidelines. Thus, a faculty member may admit someone to the production sequence who does not intend to either remain for the entire sequence or who intends to sample across the areas.
Each semester approximately 105 students are admitted into the initial courses of the three production sequences (Radio/Audio, RTF 337; Video/ TV 1, RTF 338; Film 1, RTF 366) from several hundred applicants. Approximately 30 to 35 students are permitted in each introductory class. Film production is the most sought after production area; there is usually from a 3-to-1 to 5-to-1 ratio of applications to available seats. Students who are not accepted into the initial production courses within a reasonable period of time must choose alternative study options, either within the RTF Department or in a different major completely. If you are primarily interested in taking production courses, you are encouraged to maintain an exceptional GPA, speak to producti on course instructors during consent, and plan your options in case you are not admitted to a production sequence within several semesters.
Production faculty may emphasize the number of hours a student has accumulated. Instructors may choose persons for initial production courses who appear to need an additional 3 or 4 semesters to fulfill the requirements to graduate. Thus instructors of initial production classes may tend to select students who have completed between 60 and 80 hours towards their degree. Students who have completed more than 80 hours towards their degree (whether transfer students, change of major or other reasons) may have some difficulty gaining admittance to the production sequence. Thus, students may, and are encouraged to, explain extenuating circumstances to faculty during the consent process. Final decisions concerning which students are admitted to initial production courses rest with individual faculty.