When junior marketing major Max Turner decided as a high school senior to enroll at Auburn University, he said he had no idea how much his homesickness would affect his college experience. 

Turner said that after just one semester in Alabama he was left wondering why he had ever left Texas. 

Turner is part of a new trend the Office of Admission said they had seen recently – native Texans transferring from out-of-state institutions to attend TCU. 

“They’re moving back to Texas because they want to be home in Texas,” Amanda Nickerson, director of transfer admissions, said.

According to the Office of Institutional Research, 398 transfer students enrolled at the university last fall. Of these students, 13 percent of the Texas natives were transferring after a stint at an out-of-state institution. Nickerson said that overall about 35 percent of transfer students come from out-of-state schools.

The out-of-state, four-year institutions with the highest number of students who transferred to TCU were the University of Oklahoma, Oklahoma State University, the University of Arkansas and the University of Mississippi.

Although these schools are the most common, that does not mean transfer standards are less stringent for applicants from these institutions. 

“We require a higher GPA in transfer from Mississippi, LSU, Alabama, Oklahoma State and Texas Tech than we do from Tarrant County College,” Ray Brown, dean of admission, said. 

​The university’s popularity among California natives extends to transfer students as well. After Texas, California is the most common home state for transfer students. Californians make up 11% of the undergraduate student body of 8,640 students. The university had 5,008 students from Texas enroll for the fall semester, the lowest number in the past five years according to the Office of Institutional Research.