More students than ever wanted to be apart of this year's freshman class at Texas Christian University. However, only about ten percent of those applied will be apart of the 1,800 student class.
School officials say a record 19,000 students applied, up about 5,000 from last year. While the athletic successes on the football and baseball fields have given TCU national recognition the last two years, the trend of increased applicants has been going on for nearly a decade. Dean of Admissions Ray Brown says in 2000 there were just 4,500 applicants to TCU.
"So for TCU to have tripled its number of applicants in ten years is quite extraordinary," said Brown.
But its not just more students applying, but better candidates as well.
"It was the best prepared applicant pool TCU has ever seen," said Brown. "All quantitative indicators, grades, class rank, test scores, are running at far record levels."
And given how many soon to be high school seniors are on the TCU campus this summer, Brown anticipates more records next year.
"That's one of the indicators that we look at, how many of next year's students are visiting and right now those numbers are running 44-percent ahead of last year's record pace," said Brown.
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Students have a wide variety of reasons for attending TCU, as Brown calls it a perfect storm of interest, involving athletics, academics and the aesthetics of the campus.
"I went to community college before, went to a couple of (football) games and I just loved it," said Bryce Story, an incoming freshman from Rockwall.
"The TCU team is doing pretty great, the academics are awesome, I just fell in love with the campus and it's purple, so you can't get better than that," said incoming freshman Tori Mooibroek of McKinney.
Story and Mooibroek are now almost a rare commodity on campus, native Texans. While Texans make up a majority of the students, the record applicant pool was 60 percent out-of-staters. Historically Texans make up two-thirds of applications to TCU.
In the last five years the number of freshmen enrolled from California has grown from 56 to 207, thanks to budget and education issues in the Golden State. Given all of those increases, freshmen like Mooibroek are happy to be at Summer Orientation and headed to TCU in the fall.
"I don't know how I got in, but I sure am lucky -- yes," said Mooibroek.
