TCU Academic Reputation & Scholarships

SimpleLife
Mon, 18 Jan 2010 00:25:33 +0000

Hi wahine. I don’t mind telling you, kind of vaguely, about my son. Don’t want to be too specific, because I’m guarded about my kids’ privacy, but I also want to be helpful.

My son’s high school curriculum, course load, and EC’s were probably very instrumental in putting him in the running for those great scholarships. His stats were quite good, but not really amazingly stellar.

He had two primary EC’s. Both were extremely time-consuming. He demonstrated considerable talent in each. He served in the #1 leadership and #1 talent position in his 3200 member high school in one of the EC’s, where he performed individually at the all-region level for 7 years. And he had a leadership position in the other EC and performed individually at the all-state level for 3 years and at the all-region level for 7 years. Earned national recognition junior year. These EC’s required a ton of time outside of school, as well as in school.

In order to remain in both EC’s, which together took up 4 out of 8 class periods each year, he had to get special permission for a special curriculum that he and his guidance counselor developed during his freshman year. That special curriculum required him to take numerous correspondence courses and summer school for a lot of the required non-core, and show up an hour and a half before school started every day for a year for one of his required core classes. We were told that he was the first student ever to complete 2 class-time EC’s for 4 full years in the school administration’s memory. So, I think his drive, determination, and unusual curriculum, which had him graduating with a HUGE number of credit hours, many completed in his own time, earned him extra “brownie points.”

He served in an increasingly significant capacity in the same community service for 6 years, where he was appointed the last 2 years to an advisory board position by an adult community leader. He became responsible for training new volunteers on top of the work he was already doing for the organization. This was in addition to the community service work required by his school’s National Honor Society.

He’s an excellent writer and had very good essays. And his teachers and guidance counselor wrote really great recs.

Of course, I don’t think they would have given him such good scholarships if he didn’t have great academics to match. But like I said, they were not amazingly stellar. He was top 5% from a class of over 800 kids. GPA 4.0 unweighted and 112/120 weighted. SAT 2230. Not NMSF – 213, I think. ACT 32. All AP classes --all 5’s and one 4.

Hope this helps. Good luck in the process! It’s grueling, I know!