Texas Christian University, or TCU, is known for strong academics on a beautiful campus in an engaging city. a strong emphasis on internships, a respected business program, and great dorms for their 11,150-ish undergraduate students. TCU is ranked as having the students in the United States. Fort Worth, Texas, which has a vibrant job market facilitating an easy transition from college to a career for TCU students. And as a member of the Big 12 athletic conference, you’ll never want to miss a game day. While TCU has a formal relationship with the , more than 60 religious traditions are represented on campus. The overall acceptance rate is about .
The university accepts applications Early Action, Early Decision I, Early Decision II, or Regular Decision. And remember that submitting standardized test scores as part of your application is , so you can decide whether to include your SAT or ACT score. Recently, had submitted scores, so omitting test results is not an immediate negative for you application. As a result, the students who do submit test scores tend to have very high scores, with the scores playing an important role in underlining the strength of their application and college readiness. A SAT for TCU is above 1350, and a strong ACT is above 30.
In this post, we’ll be focusing on the unquantifiable aspects of your application. In the supplement, it’s about who you are — not what you have scored. The key to a strong supplement, though, is communicating the essence of who you are through an academic lens that is most going to not just impress TCU application readers, but actually make them feel connected to you as a human. Below, we tell you how to pull this off for Texas Christian University.
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The TCU supplement is fairly straightforward. There is one supplement, but you have four prompts to pick from. Which prompt you pick really matters — not because there is an objectively wrong choice but because there are wrong options for you. Picking the right answer for you as an applicant is critical.
TCU emphasizes that they want to hear about your passions, creativity, and imagination, but they also want to see evidence of your writing skills and ability to structure a strong response. Your essay should be 300-500 words, and you can write in a tone that shows you personality, whether it is earnest, enthusiastic, or even light-hearted. While TCU allows for the possibility of humor, we advise our students to steer clear of trying to land a joke on a college app, as you don’t know the sense of humor of the application readers. Now, let’s find out which prompt is your best fit.
OPTION ONE
At TCU, our mission statement is very important to us. “The mission of Texas Christian University, a private comprehensive university, is to educate individuals to think and act as ethical leaders and responsible citizens in the global community through research and creative activities, scholarship, service, and programs of teaching and learning offered through the doctoral level.” This is integrated into all aspects of the TCU experience. If you were to write a mission statement about your life, what would it be and how does this mission direct your life and goals?
This is a really interesting prompt, and it’s even more interesting that they give you a lot of space to work with: 300-500 words. Take a cue from TCU and keep the mission statement part of this prompt short, but then you’ll be building out a larger answer around it.
First, the mission statement. A mission statement is typically 1-3 sentences that sum up your most lofty ideals and goals while making clear your central beliefs and priorities. If family drives all your choices, that would be in the mission statement. Or if you always aim to be a kind leader, that should be in here too. If you are someone who prefers to play a supporting, yet critical, role, emphasizing how you contribute to the whole of a community or organization can be a strong inclusion. If it sounds pretty lofty, that’s sort of the point. You are speaking to your best, most aspirational self here. Feel free, too, to bounce it off of a parent or a friend — does this sound like you?
Once you have your mission statement, we recommend writing your response sentence by sentence — or clause by clause if you have committed to a strong use of commas. Pair a story from your life, or a dream for your future, to each sentence or clause. Approaching the prompt this way lets you talk about 2-4 facets of who you are, deepening the application reader’s understanding of who you are.
OPTION TWO
Tell us about the most significant person, experience, or circumstance which has shaped your life thus far. How has he, she, or it influenced your character? How might you use what you have learned to achieve your goals?
This is a great prompt with one caveat. You should not write about another person. This application is about you, and writing about someone else pivots too far away from yourself.
You can, however, write a super strong supplement centered on an experience or circumstance. The most important thing to do after telling the focus story, though, is the bit about how what you learned will lead you to achieving your goals. Be as specific as you can here, as TCU really wants to see you envisioning your future. You can even work in specific ways that TCU can play a role in your journey, whether it’s a major, program, or professor who fits perfectly into helping you towards what you can see down the line in your life.
OPTION THREE
Those we call great will usually point to some failure in their lives as a pivotal moment leading them to their successful path. Tell us about a time in your life in which failure propelled you toward success.
This prompt is interesting if you have something super relevant and real to write about. The failure has to be true fall-on-your-face failure, not some blip on the radar that you recovered from quickly. If you haven’t experienced such a dramatic set-back, that’s totally okay — pick another prompt! If you have had something truly terrible happen, this may be a good fit, though.
But let’s add another layer. You need to not only have failed — you need to have played a role in the failure. In other words, this can’t be something that happened to you, you need to have been in the driver seat (or at least co-pilot).
Once you’ve fine-tuned the failure you’ll be focusing on, it’s time to craft the story. Remember, the structure of this story needs to not just dwell on failure, but also look toward future success. Let yourself dream, and build that dream on top of the dumpster fire of the past.
OPTION FOUR
In her best-selling novel The Secret Life of Bees, TCU alumna Sue Monk Kidd wrote, “The hardest thing on earth is choosing what matters.” What matters to you?
This is a fascinating prompt because it offers massive opportunities for exploration and storytelling. You can treat it nearly like a second Common Application personal statement, highlighting another aspect of your character and personality. The key for a prompt like this is to run with it, pulling out all of your creative writing tools, from things like braided structure to dialog, to elongated metaphor. If this is the prompt you want to pick, we highly recommend reaching out. We can help you make the most of it.
Freedom of Expression Page
In addition to the supplement, TCU has what they call the “Freedom of Expression Page.” Like the Vassar ‘Your Space’, the Freedom of Expression Page offers applicants the opportunities to show a piece of yourself that doesn’t appear in your application otherwise. This could include “an essay, poem, work of art or URL.” We do not, however, recommend including a URL unless you are very careful and crafted. Many students jump to include a blog or online resume, and that can often either look clunky or include things that aren’t really relevant to college (or even could turn application readers off). So, be careful with URLs.
One great use for a URL, though, is for performances. If you are singer, actor, musician, or anything else best communicated through audio or video a URL can make sense.
Regardless of what you include for the Freedom of Expression Page, the TCU supplement lets you show application readers key characteristics and spotlight compelling experiences. Make the most of it!
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