As the month of April draws near, more and more applicants to overwhelmingly popular Texas A&M University will learn whether or not being an Aggie is in their future. Like the University of Texas at Austin, which I wrote about last month, Texas A&M is becoming an increasingly selective university, due largely to continued population growth in the state of Texas. However, like UT, A&M provides a pathway for students not admitted to the flagship campus their freshman year to ultimately receive an A&M diploma. It’s called the Program for System Admission, or PSA.
PSA at A&M is very much like the Coordinated Admissions Program (CAP) at UT. Essentially, students who are not initially offered a spot at Texas A&M College Station, but who meet minimum admission requirements at one of A&M’s system schools, will be invited to enroll at the system campus with the guarantee of admission to the College Station campus upon completing 24 hours of coursework and maintaining a 3.0 GPA at the system campus, as well as on all transferable coursework, such as community college dual credit courses. (Engineering students must maintain a 3.25). Students must also submit a transfer application to Texas A&M College Station by March 15 of their freshman year at the participating campus.
The PSA program at A&M is a bit more inclusive than the CAP program at UT in that students from disciplines outside the College of Liberal Arts may participate, though some majors are not represented (the most notable being all majors within the College of Business). A&M strongly cautions against students participating in PSA with the hopes of transferring to one of the unrepresented majors once on the College Station campus. (A link to participating majors, along with other pertinent PSA information is at the end of this article).
Participating PSA campuses are Prairie View A&M, Tarleton State, Texas A&M International, Texas A&M Commerce, Texas A&M Corpus Christi, Texas A&M Kingsville, Texas A&M Texarkana, and West Texas A&M. Students are notified of which campuses are available to them in their invitation letters.
The good news for hopeful Aggies is that, even in this increasingly competitive era of college admissions, A&M provides a way to get that Aggie ring, whether you “gig ’em” from the get-go or a year down the road. And PSA is just one of several alternative pathways. Go here to learn more about the PSA program and reach out to me if you’re interested in learning about others.
