More Horned Frog hopefuls than ever applied for admission next fall as the Feb. 15 deadline came and went. And it was not even close 8212; the Office of Admission received more than 18,000 applications for an estimated 1,820 spots in next year’s freshman class, which means just more than 10 percent of applicants will make up the class.

Jim Atwood, who has been the chair of the committee on student selection for more than two decades, said making the selections has never been harder.

“It’s always been the case that there have been more [applicants] than we can accommodate,” he said. “But this year, the challenge of accommodating people is much more pronounced.”

According to data provided by the Office of Admission, in 2006, TCU accepted 62.7 percent of applicants. In 2010, the university accepted 52.9 percent of applicants.

This year, Atwood said the exact number of applications will not be known for a few months.

Atwood and Housing & Residence Life Director Craig Allen both said they expected the class of 2015 to contain roughly the same number of students that entered TCU the last two years: 1,821.

Atwood said that to reach that number, he suspected approximately 7,000 of the more than 18,000 applicants would be accepted this spring.

He said that even though applications have increased, he did not think it was completely due to the success of the football and baseball teams, which brought TCU increased national exposure.

“I think the decisive factor is having students come to campus and see what’s here,” Atwood said.

One problem that residential services encountered in 2009 was that more students accepted admission than they anticipated, Allen and Atwood said. A class size of 1,821 instead of the expected approximation of 1,600 unexpectedly forced students to live in lounges.

“What we’ve gotten better at is, because we know we’re going to need those bed spaces, we do a much better job planning for it,” Allen said.

Allen said the relationship between the Office of Admission and the Office of Housing & Residence Life worked year-round, but his office still could not plan too far ahead when it came to room assignments.

“We start planning for not just where freshmen will live, but what gender we need for each floor because we have to pay attention to that,” he said. “We have some flexibility in some places, but we have to make sure we get the gender right too.”