College Admissions

[TCUdirtbag]

My child had an ACT 34 and a perfect GPA last year. A top candidate with all the accolades and awards you might want. Got admitted to TCU but only on a Faculty scholarship ($19k iirc). Also got into a (US News) Top 10 university and is super happy there. In the highly selective college admissions world, TCU isn’t that big of a deal. So kids getting into super selective schools with admissions rates of 3 to 5% are getting into TCU as well, but not with nearly as good scholarships as you’d think. We aren’t the only ones this has happened to. TCU is making many odd admissions / scholly choices IMO.

I’ll also add: of all schools toured (a very high number), TCU’s tour was most rotten. The influx of CA kids is not a good look for TCU IMO. A very different group of kids than the solid groups from TX, OK, KS, MO, AR, and NE that I went to school with.

[ Finebaum ]ting on a bunch of college kids from Orange County is certainly a choice. Glad Duke/NWern/Chicago is working out for your kid.

 

[ticketfrog123]

My child had an ACT 34 and a perfect GPA last year. A top candidate with all the accolades and awards you might want. Got admitted to TCU but only on a Faculty scholarship ($19k iirc). Also got into a (US News) Top 10 university and is super happy there. In the highly selective college admissions world, TCU isn’t that big of a deal. So kids getting into super selective schools with admissions rates of 3 to 5% are getting into TCU as well, but not with nearly as good scholarships as you’d think. We aren’t the only ones this has happened to. TCU is making many odd admissions / scholly choices IMO.

I’ll also add: of all schools toured (a very high number), TCU’s tour was most rotten. The influx of CA kids is not a good look for TCU IMO. A very different group of kids than the solid groups from TX, OK, KS, MO, AR, and NE that I went to school with.

Rotten in terms of tour quality (tour guide?) or the peers / families on the tour?

 

[tcuball3]

How much is TCU legacy considered now? My boys (age 6/2) will be 4th generation.

 

[ticketfrog123]

How much is TCU legacy considered now? My boys (age 6/2) will be 4th generation.

Depends on your priority point rank and lifetime donations (if you’ve hit the lifetime award tier of 50k, etc)

Maybe the chancellors council for annual donation is on radar too but probably not as impactful as you’d think.

 

[Brevity Frog]

Rotten in terms of tour quality (tour guide?) or the peers / families on the tour?

Tour guide was truly horrible. Very much a CA kid, didn't do a good job at all. Messed up on several things, including history of the school, various school facts, various programs within the school. I couldn't believe it. Then we ran into a group of students, talked to them, mostly from CA, and were just very unimpressed with their attitude and overall affect. It's just not the same group of students.

 

[Brevity Frog]

[ Finebaum ]ting on a bunch of college kids from Orange County is certainly a choice. Glad Duke/NWern/Chicago is working out for your kid.

I'm not [ Finebaum ]ting on them and I have no clue what county they're from. What the heck? I am saying that the group of kids is just different. A lot more money, very "California" in attitude and affect, and it results in a very different group from the "flyover country" group of kids I went to school with at TCU.

 

[mc1502]

What other private schools in Cali are there? My cali TCU friends all crack jokes about Pepperdine and Santa Clara not being great schools

That may be the case, but I have a global team, and my best team member is a Pepperdine grad. Wish I had 100 of her.

 

[Brevity Frog]

That may be the case, but I have a global team, and my best team member is a Pepperdine grad. Wish I had 100 of her.

Pepperdine is a great school.

 

[What Up Toad]

I'm not [ Finebaum ]ting on them and I have no clue what county they're from. What the heck? I am saying that the group of kids is just different. A lot more money, very "California" in attitude and affect, and it results in a very different group from the "flyover country" group of kids I went to school with at TCU.

I think that's just Gen Z.

 

[ticketfrog123]

I think that's just Gen Z.

The number of pink and electric blue haired students at TCU is up exponentially - it’s a California thing

 

[Horny4TCU]

Pepperdine is a great school.

Is she from an immigrant family? Or is she from an established Californian family?

 

[Deep Purple]

With that strong of a profile (and legacy status), a defer is somewhat surprising.

Legacy plays no role in admissions. Each applicant stands on their own record -- not what their parents did.

Remember reading that with the Rose Bowl win back in 2010, applications to attend TCU jumped from about 10K to over 20K in 2011. They have stayed at the 18K - 20K per year level since then for about 2K per class slots.

The Rose Bowl obviously affected applications, but people way overestimate its impact. These are application numbers during the five years leading up to the Rose Bowl and for five years after:

2006: 8,677
2007: 11,888
2008: 12,212
2009: 11,951
2010: 14,079
2011: 19,168
2012: 19,334
2013: 18,549
2014: 17,029
2015: 18,422

Obviously, applications were trending up for many years prior to the Rose Bowl, with the most notable leaps in 2007 and 2010. There was another leap in 2011, the year after the Rose Bowl, but the effect was limited. After only two years, applications began to drop again. They went back on the rise during years when TCU either accomplished nothing exceptional in football or nothing at all. (We did play in the Big 12 Championship in 2017, losing to OU for the second time that season. Also lost to Iowa State during the reg season.)

2016: 19,972
2017: 19,740
2018: 20,156
2019: 19,028
2020: 21,145
2021: 19,782
2022: 16,197

These numbers are for first-time applicants and do no include graduate or transfer applications.

 

[Chongo94]

The number of pink and electric blue haired students at TCU is up exponentially - it’s a California thing

Really? Then explain all the plus 40 year old Karens in Burleson, Waxahachie, and elsewhere up and down 35 in Texas with green, blue, pink, and purple hair.

 

[Hemingway]

Been on this site for the last 15 months and am finally piping in. California Dad here of a HFD in her 2nd year. We had absolutely no prior connection to TCU other than a friends daughter went here several years ago. My daughter made a visit to TCU during her sophomore year in High School and came home saying this is where she wanted to go. She did relatively well in High School and had many options including that Pony School in Dallas (which admittedly was my initial preference for her) as well as many of the smaller private schools in California (Loyola, Chapman, USD, etc). All of whom's cost and scholarships packages didn't differ all that much from TCU's offer to her (and sending her to TCU is a financial sacrifice for us). For us and many of the California families that we know, one of the main attractions of TCU is that it offered a saner education environment (especially during Covid) that wouldn't try and overly indoctrinate my kid. I'm not a raging conservative but the majority of the schools in California have completely gone off the rails with the political indoctrination and the lack of diversity of thought (Colleges used to be beacons of Free Expression). I can't tell you how many of my friends kids have graduated from these schools with a completely different mindset from when they went in. I know TCU is not perfect but its so so much better than the alternative we would have been looking at. So yes, the big time football is part of the attraction but only part. Based on the direction of this State, I would suspect that the applications from California will only continue to increase. Oh and my daughter loves TCU and she made the right choice over that Pony School.

HFD means Horned Frog Daughter ?

 

[FrogBall09]

His GPA was over 4.0 on a 4.4 scale and ACT of 31. He took as many honors classes as he could. Active in varsity sports, student body government, etc.

I had similar numbers when I applied to TCU years ago and had almost a full ride. I’m hearing southern schools in general have gotten really competitive.

Also interesting that roughly only 30% of applicants submit standardized test scores. That likely helps increase diversity, but hurts those with strong scores.

Did she ask for early decision? I.e commit to attending if she is accepted?

TCU has a lot of applications that do ask for early decision and will often accept a student with slightly lower scores and grades that is committed to attending over a kid with better numbers but still evaluating other options- variability is the devil in admissions and they reduce the risk as much as possible - if they can fill half the class with qualified early decisions applicants, they will do it

At this point, they key is what Dirt mentioned earlier - if she wants to attend TCU, now is the time to show it by calling the Admissions office and telling them that directly, talking about why it’s the school for her, etc

Again - TCU wants to accept kids that really want to be at TCU - it’s one of the keys to why we have a much lower transfer out rates than our peer schools

I would even ask to make an appointment to talk to Heath - it may take a few days to find a spot but he is great and always willing to talk about what they are looking for to finish the class

 

[FrogBall09]

the 4.4 is a weighted scale that tries to differentiate between a regular senior english class from an "honors" class from a dual credit class to an ap class

don't recall the numerical breakdown but straight gpa isn't always indicative of academic achievement and kids know how to play the game to maximize their gpa by selecting a combination of "honors", dual credit, and ap classes

our daughter had just under a 4.0 gpa and wasn't in the top 10 percent of her graduating class of ~850.

she made the decision to maximize the college credits she could pickup by taking dual credits and ap classes versus the gpa game

Schools normalize all GPAs before comparing

Asking what methodology they use to normalize can help because there are a couple of different approaches- but they do try to get closer to an apples to apples approach

 

[FrogBall09]

This isn’t true. I knew plenty of chancellors scholars with 31-32 ACT scores in the recent decade that came from podunk HS as valedictorian (and struggled at TCU bc their HS was a joke)

TCU has gotten easier for admission post Covid given financial impact to families and lower ACT scores with the new admissions dean (scores and acceptance rates moved wrong direction and closer to Baylor)

What new Dean are you talking about?

And what metric do you think moved the wrong way?

The goal has never been to be Rice - although they get the applicant pool every year to be that selective if TCU wanted

But anyone that has ever been to Rice (or Stanford for that matter) and spent time on campus beyond a casual visit will know why no one would really want to emulate the terrible student experience they have created.

Support of athletics at both schools is not the only aspect of their community that suffers from the high academic performance only focus of their admissions process

 

[East Coast]

The number of pink and electric blue haired students at TCU is up exponentially - it’s a California thing

That's just a ridiculous statement. Last time I was in Texas (September/October) there were a representative number of off colored and/or highly pierced people there. These fashion trends come and go; unfortunately we are far more a "look at me" society, which leads to more "out there" fashion choices (in IMO).

 

[tyler durden]

What other private schools in Cali are there? My cali TCU friends all crack jokes about Pepperdine and Santa Clara not being great schools

Chapman is a cousin institution to TCU down in Orange. Beautiful campus. A close #2 choice for my current freshman at TCU.

 

[East Coast]

What new Dean are you talking about?

And what metric do you think moved the wrong way?

The goal has never been to be Rice - although they get the applicant pool every year to be that selective if TCU wanted

But anyone that has ever been to Rice (or Stanford for that matter) and spent time on campus beyond a casual visit will know why no one would really want to emulate the terrible student experience they have created.

Support of athletics at both schools is not the only aspect of their community that suffers from the high academic performance only focus of their admissions process

I don't know enough about what is going on at Rice, but the overall experience at Stanford has plummeted the last 20 years. Stanford treats its students like big tech treats its customers, and its not only athletics.