Today we’re talking TCU! Located in Fort Worth, TX, Texas Christian University (and now we will consider ourselves on a nickname basis for the remainder of this post) has a lot to commend itself — it’s in the broader DFW metroplex, so it’s got an urban and exciting campus alongside its strong academic offerings.

Its are pretty impressive. It’s on the Top 40 Best Undergraduate Teaching list, and 98% of its faculty teach undergraduates (it’s also got intimate classes with a 14:1 student-to-faculty ratio). It also features among the names on the Top 20 Best Private School Alumni Networks round-up, but perhaps what’s most compelling is its : it prides itself on having “the happiest students in the nation.” The Princeton Review ranked it #2 in terms of best quality of life last year, and between Greek life and Big-12 athletics the student body’s social calendar is busy!

TCU has an , but they’ve also got a lot of interest. Last year, approximately ; if TCU is your dream school, you’ll want to make sure your application materials are thoughtfully curated to ensure your acceptance.

TCU is , so there’s no need to submit an SAT or ACT score if standardized testing isn’t your strong suit. However, if you’ve got scores that land in the upper section of TCU’s middle-50 testing range (that’s between an 1170 and 1350 on the SAT or between a 27 and a 31 on the ACT), we recommend that you report your scores to bolster your application. 

Scores and GPA are the quantifiable aspects of your materials, but there are a few more components to your application, and we’ll break those down for you here.

Supplement Strategy

This year, TCU has eliminated its supplemental essay. Technically, if you apply through , you’ll still need to respond to last year’s required essay (taking your pick from the 4 available prompts) instead of providing a personal statement. If that’s what you’re going to do, great news! We’ve got a detailed guide for those exact prompts in last year’s TCU supplement blog here.

However, if you are in the vast, vast majority that is applying to TCU through the CommonApp, Coalition App, or Apply Texas, you will NOT have that supplement available to you, even as an optional essay. What that means it that the materials you do submit are bearing the brunt of the admission department’s scrutiny — your personal statement, your resume, and your Freedom of Expression example (yeah, we know this sounds random — we’ll get back to it in a second).

Of course, your personal statement goes to every school you apply to, so it’s not specific to TCU. Still, it’s really important that your personal statement is the best it can be, so if you have any doubts about your essay (or if you’re still working on it), we highly recommend that you check out our Official Common App Essay Guide. It helps students get into college every year (seriously, we’ve gotten emails from strangers about it!).

Now, onto the final two pieces.

Resume

Technically, uploading your resume is optional. However, not only is optional never really optional in the world of college admissions, but when you’ve got no required essay it’s in your best interest to show that you’ve done everything you could to put your best foot forward for a school’s consideration. So: you should definitely submit a resume.

Beyond the optics of going the extra mile, the resume allows you to provide information that the activities section doesn’t. That being said, it’s important that your resume doesn’t just recreate what you’ve already reported on the activities section; it shouldn’t just list the same 10 activities with truncated descriptions.

Let’s be honest — those iron-clad 150-character limits are, in fact, LIMITING. Instead, the resume you put together for college applications specifically should draw focus to — and elaborate on — the activities and experiences most important to you and most relevant to the aspirations you’ve listed on your application.

Freedom of Expression

This one is… a bit hard to describe. If, as we noted before, it sounds random, that’s because it is a bit random! TCU doesn’t even call this a prompt or a project; they just call it a “Freedom of Expression.” Their is entitled “What's a Freedom of Expression and Should I Submit One?” To that we say: what is a freedom of expression, indeed?

In this case, a TCU “freedom of expression” appears to be exercising your freedom of expression. In their own words, the FOE “is designed to give students the opportunity to fully express themselves while applying to TCU.”

Do NOT get the wrong idea; this is not a place to be political or share your hot takes. They’re actually just looking for something personal that helps them get to know you and shares a bit more about who you are. Or, in their words again, “it’s essentially another way to show us your personality through a piece of writing, photography, video, art or anything you create.”

In 2022, they made the point that the FOE truly is optional, and that less than 7% of applicants submitted one. While they haven’t published numbers in recent years, our guess is that there will be more submissions in this upcoming cycle given the elimination of the official supplement. Regardless, even if we were still talking single digits, you’ll want to upload something to show another facet of your profile and to demonstrate your genuine interest.

The directions given on the Common App specify that “the only limitations are the boundaries of your imagination” and invite you to “upload an essay, poem, work of art or a URL that showcases another side of you.”

You can, truly, submit anything — and while you might be tempted to tailor it to TCU, that actually defeats the point. If you engineer your response to TCU, not only are you recreating a supplement they chose to remove from the application, but you’re limiting your expression by making it a kind of audition. That’s really not what they’re looking for; they want to see what you create for your own sake and for the joy of doing it. You can truly present whatever you want — just make sure you present something!

Strong applications require smart strategy. If you’re looking for a personalized plan, we’ve got you.