Pretty much the only one near UTD’s academic profile is UH (last I checked) so I’m just really going to talk about UH here as discussing Tech and Texas State isn’t worth the effort.
UH is a very generalized institution trying to be a big state university (despite just being a city). UH offers nearly 300 degrees while UTD (being locally and system focused) is more specialized offering less than 150.
If you specifically exclude UH’s bonus point for Law/Med/etc, to try and get a true apples to apples/head to head comparison UTD is better in the vast majority of categories.
UTD’s MBA ties with Rice in the rankings ahead of aggy and SMU and only behind UT Austin in this state.
UTD engineering is 4th behind UT Austin, Rice, and aggy.
UTD has other great targeted programs like Audiology that it is also nationally known for.
UH’s best programs are Hospitality, Entrepreneurship, Social Work, and Pharmacy. While their is nothing wrong with those learning paths, I think anyone trying to truly decide which school is academically superior has a pretty open and shut case.
UH can offer the more traditional big time-ish college experience compared to UTD, but UTD is a far better academic institution albeit in a more targeted capacity (which is in line with the goals of the UT system).
This is also why it’s not an honest statement to claim UTD of going after Texas and aggy rejects. People going to UTD aren’t generally the same applicants looking for the big time college experience. Those go to Tech, UH or out of state to OU, Arkansas, LSU, or Ole Miss if they can’t get it.
UTD applicants are most likely looking for the best academic public school option they can find, which doesn’t line up with these same type of students that were being discussed in the previous comment, which is why it’s an insult to them to lump them in with those universities trying to be like UT/aggy. That is not what UTD is doing, it’s trying to be like UC Santa Cruz not UCLA.