UTQT

Cool! Congrats! I'll be there too.

I have 

I have 

I have 

I received an email this morning from UNC Chapel Hill to inform me I was admitted off of the waitlist! This is one of my top choices and I could not be more thrilled. It also means I’ll be turning down the waitlist at IU Bloomington, so hopefully someone moves up in the ranks there! 

I wasn't trying to accuse you of holding those views, and if I came across that way I'm sorry. When I mentioned those methods in opposition to what I was doing or had read, it's because those are the opposing ideas to what I'm talking about that do exist. When I say something like , "rather than presenting Academic English as infallible" it's not in response to you - it's in response to what a great many teachers do. It is just the other option in the wider conversation. Sorry if that was unclear, or I made you feel like I was attacking you for some imaginary pedagogy. I'm more including the other because it is a part of the conversation (which is happening everywhere, for what it's worth. This has been a consistent conversation among writing teachers since at least my practicum a few years ago, so it definitely bears discussing.)

Hi, @E. Coronaria: I'm sorry--I didn't mean to insult or offend you with my post. 
I wasn't trying to say that I think you're only going to chalk and talk all day about grammar rules or that I think you're unfairly penalizing students. I'm also certainly not trying to advocate for ignoring grammar or withholding any sort of "code" from students.
I did, however, feel a need to respond to the idea of using grammar to "clearly articulate to my students why their writing is poor." I've been teaching composition for over a decade so I've worked with a lot of students who, as you said, have been effectively disenfranchised and whose confidence has been all but obliterated by past experiences with grammar instruction (or lack thereof), writing instruction, and school in general. And as @M(allthevowels)H has said, this is all part of a much larger conversation that has a lot of momentum in the field, so I think we were both trying to offer a summary of the larger state of things in order to position what we were saying in context. Like you, I care deeply about giving students access to as many tools for success as possible, and that's all I was trying to offer in my post: ways of granting and facilitating that access that don't involve having to necessarily master advanced grammatical concepts or to fall back on the all-too-common modes of teaching grammar that loads of people use because it's just the norm to do so. 
I tried to be pretty clear in my post about ways that I provide grammar instruction that gives students access to SAE without enforcing it as the only or even best way of presenting their ideas. The text I recommended is also an excellent read for anyone--not just people who will be teaching others--because it directly addresses the issues of being disenfranchised by grammar instruction (or a lack thereof) by reframing grammar is a toolkit rather than as a code students must learn or a monolith they must bow down to. The first time I read Rhetorical Grammar, I felt vindicated and empowered and it opened my eyes to ways that I could reframe my teaching role and relationship with students to give them rhetorical choices without having them leave their own grammar at the door.
Again, I'm not trying to suggest that I think you're out to do anything bad, I'm just an old fart with unsolicited advice.
 

Yes, it sometimes happens that you meet with faculty who aren't necessarily in your field; it all depends on who is in town and is available that weekend. I met with the person who became my advisor (and was my POI on my statement of purpose), and a professor that I have barely seen since that recruitment weekend. 

I echo everything that @dazedandbemused said, and would especially stress not getting a parking pass from the university. They run about ~200 per year, which is pretty high given that you aren't guaranteed parking. Also, traffic is a bloody mess around that area, and I think that + gas makes it not worth it.
To expand on a comment of mine from earlier: While east/west bus service in town is really spotty, if you can land somewhere on the North-South angle of town, you can usually land a bus that will get you to campus, and at no cost to you as a UT student. Even for some of the more southmost/northmost parts of town, you can catch the 801 or 803 rapid shuttle, which will drop you off right on the main drag of campus, and pretty quickly at that. If you want to avoid some of the higher Hyde Park/North Campus rents and are willing to go north (up by 183) or south (down by 290/Southpark Meadows), both the 801 or 803 are an excellent bus option. Personally, my recommendation would be to land a place with reliable bus service and save yourself the trouble of car costs (gas, insurance, repairs, etc). I all things considered am glad I have a car, but I recently had an expensive repair bill that made me wish I only needed to rely on the bus. 
If you know you'll be flying a couple times a year, there's a bus that leaves from campus (the 100) and goes straight to the airport. Like all buses, it's free for UT students.
My first year, I got to campus on the 7 bus, which from my neighborhood at the time (where I rented a place for a cool $500/month, a price that's still kind of available there) took between 35-45 minutes. Not ideal, but with traffic you aren't guaranteed a fast commute a lot of the time, and if you can read on the bus, which I can, it's not wasted time.

Great questions, honestly. I didn't think to ask them and am, five years later, super grateful that I chose well on these counts anyway (other than campus carry which I'll get back to).
Health insurance is actually really good. It has reasonable copays and since it's such a big system, is taken pretty much everywhere in TX.
While they do throw you right into TAing, it's very much a supported experience. The department has cubicles in a separate building for you to hold office hours, as well as tiny but workable office cubes that are only shared by two people (I wouldn't recommend trying to work in there at the same time though, lol). You also get access to much larger cubes with windows once you enter candidacy. There's a graduate lounge (which you'll be visiting the first day I believe) that has computers and a copier for teaching materials, as well as a sink area with all you'd need to warm up or store meals you bring from home.
As far as bureaucracy, the grad admin people are excellent. I recommend getting on Patricia and Cassandra's good side! They can help you fix just about any problem. As to the multi-campus system, I haven't found it to make any particular difference in how things are run. In many ways all of the campuses here operate independently, and I also think that UT Austin being the main campus means that what happens here is the rule. Now, there are definitely some things that you'll encounter that will be bureaucratic nightmares, like submitting your MA report or Dissertation to the Main Building. But for the most part, the in-house team makes it super easy. Although you do have to walk to the other side of campus to pick up your keys...but I only had to do that once!
Now to campus carry. It's kind of amusing you should ask now, because yesterday we were actually notified of two instances where people had brought their concealed carry weapons to campus and then left them lying around. Twice. In one day. The English dept is extremely anti-campus carry however, which helps to off-set the existential horror.

I emailed last week to ask about schedules and was told we’d be getting them by the end of this week. So, hopefully by the end of today or tomorrow!

Preface: Not currently at UT, but have friends there.
Even though traffic sucks and parking is a pain, commuting isn’t impossible. I’ve known folks who’ve commuted from Kyle, Pfluegerville, and Cedar Park. Just consider that what you might spend on gas and the overpriced parking pass might be equivalent to (or more than) the difference in rent.

I can't add much to silenus' great advice, other than to reinforce how expensive rent can be. I'm a 5th year and when I first moved here my apartment was 575; that same apartment is now renting for 925. There are still some great gems left, but it's definitely an extra stressor.
It's also totally true that collegiality is important in the department. My cohort and the cohort ahead of us (affectionately-ish called the brohort) have spent tons of time together over the years and I think most people have ease finding a good group of friends to bitch and moan with. There have also been a number of programmatic changes in the last two years that IMO will only improve the grad experience.
Good luck choosing! I came here specifically for my diss advisor and she has been everything I hoped and more.

1. If you're coming in with an MA, you might TA for one year, but if your MA came with teaching experience you might start teaching intro-level rhetoric and composition. If you're coming in with a BA, you TA for a large lecture class in either American, Brit, or World lit. You get two groups of 25 students once a week each for a discussion section lasting 50 minutes, so I suppose you might call it a "2/2" but it feels more like a 1/1 since in terms of hours in the classroom you're only spending an hour and forty minutes per week. You get a chance to rank your preferences before each semester that you TA, and typically I've got to TA for one of the top three options I rank. Those assignments are made based more on time (i.e. when your seminars are) and availability rather than what your own field is. Typically, you TA at least one Brit and American class each, in my experience (I did a full year of both). World Lit has pronouncedly lower enrollment than American or Brit, so if there's lots of demand for that class it's less likely you'll get it.
2. No dress code, but from what I remember from my own year and the years succeeding, it ranged from business casual to standard business dress. Basically, don't dress *too* down, but don't feel like you need to bust out a suit or anything like that.
3. I might be the wrong person to ask about this, because for some reason I arrived at a time where I had plenty of coursework in my field (modern/contemporary drama). For my two coursework years I had at least one drama class per semester, usually two (though half of those were Renaissance/Shakespeare classes). I know some of my friends who study 18th century lit have a harder time finding classes and will go out of department on occasion. Generally speaking, though, UT recruits based on the strengths of its professoriate, so my general feeling is that you won't have a hard time finding interesting classes. I didn't have a dud in my whole coursework period.
4. As I said in my response to @RK092089: if rents were lower in Austin, I would say it's a completely affordable city. Not much else is expensive when compared to other cities like it, and if you're able to get on a good bus corridor to campus (or live in a neighborhood with a UT shuttle), you ride the bus for free as a UT student, so it's easy to spend little on transport. As for the funding, yes, it is quite egalitarian; even inter-departmental jobs that are competitive and sometimes come with teaching relief pay the same as the stipend you make when you're teaching as an instructor of record. 
5. Depends on what you mean by "highly experimental," I suppose, but my general statement here is that everyone I am friends with in the program doesn't have issue with their advisors pushing back on their research agendas. When I have heard cases of advisors and their advisees butting heads, which is few and far between, it's not usually because of the "experimental" nature of the advisee's work. 
6. I could write a whole tome on this, but the answer is YES, and it's one of the biggest reasons why I'm happy I chose UT. Everyone was super collegial at the recruitment weekend, and that atmosphere remained in place when I arrived at UT to start my PhD. You'll hear people talk about "collegiality" in our department, and it's not just a buzzword.