TCU Historical Admissions 1999-2011 and AP Football Ranking

TCU’s football program has gained national recognition in the past couple of years. My freshman year at TCU (2005) I remember TCU beating Oklahoma who was highly ranked. Since 2005 TCU has been ranked every year except 2007. Around this same time I noticed applications to TCU were dramatically increasing. I was curious as to how much of the increase in applications could be explained by the football program. When I looked at the TCU Fact Book I found that a higher ranking really didn’t correlate with the increase in applications. For instance, the largest percentage increase came in 2007 when the prior AP ranking for TCU was 22 but the increase in applications was 37%. However, after TCU won the Rose Bowl and was ranked #2 and the number of applications increased 36%. The largest increase in the number of applications (not percent) did come after the Rose Bowl win. Also was it interesting is that the acceptance rate of TCU has gone down dramatically. In 1999, the acceptance rate was only 75%. For 2011, the acceptance rate was a mere 38%. In a little over a decade it has become twice has hard to get into TCU!