USC is my current dream school. I am planning to do a Biology major (and a music minor if it works out).
I have had straight A’s all throughout freshman and sophomore year.
However, my junior year hasn’t gone so well.
I am taking 4 AP classes and an Honors class. I got one B+ last trimester in AP Chemistry and two B+'s this trimester in AP Stats and AP Chem. My GPA this trimester is a 4.6 and my unweighted GPA is a 3.8.
I am worried because I have heard that junior year is the most important year of high school and so far, it’s been my worst year academically.
My recent ACT score is a 32. I have not taken the SAT yet.
As for my extracurriculars, I am also in a varsity sports team at school and I am involved in a few school clubs. I have done a science summer camp last year and I am planning to do one this year. I have worked closely with a charity and raised money for them as an ambassador.
Would I get into USC? Are there other pre-med schools that you suggest I look into? (Preferably one with good science majors and vocal music minors)
In terms of getting “Chanced” for USC, it is virtually impossible for others to predict what may or may not occur in your specific case. With an admit rate now of only 13% and falling, and with 4K+ applicants with 4.0 unweighted GPAs and test scores in the 99th percentile among those not gaining admission, your success will instead likely depend on too many potential factors for anyone to correctly evaluate… making predicting admission nearly impossible.
Instead… it will likely come down to a composite and holistic analysis of your stats coupled with writing ability / essays, ECs, potential leadership roles, potential other unique qualifiers (URM, First Gen, geography, demographics, etc.), your Why USC? explanation/reasoning, etc.
I suggest possibly reading an excellent thread on the topic from the beginning…
You should absolutely apply to USC, especially if it’s your dream school. As the hockey star Wayne Gretzky said, you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.
Pre-med with a music minor is a great USC combo, but if you’re any sort of pre-professional (pre-med, pre-law, etc.) you should take a look at the top graduate programs in your field (i.e. top medical schools) and see where they get most of their undergrads from. USC is a great school and all that - I voted with my feet - but for a generic bio / pre-med major you might just want to look at a good small liberal arts college, perhaps one that offers you a large scholarship so you don’t have to take on a lot of debt before going to grad school.
Just my 2 cents. But you sound like a good fit for USC so by all means apply!
I would add to anyone that is applying that luck is a factor. I do not mean they are drawing names out of a hat. I mean things such as the year you apply. One year your specific resume may be unique to an admissions department intent on building a diverse class with students from different areas with different backgrounds with different skills and the next there may be several students with a similar resume. It can be as random as geography. One specific example is a student from my son’s school got into what most what most consider a top 10 college with numbers well below what one would expect and it turned out that the school had just gotten an insanely low number of applications from his state that year. The year before and after he would not have had a shot.
I do not say this as discouragement but to say that if you do not get into your chosen school it probably says NOTHING ABOUT YOU or your abilities. I wish you the best and hope you end up with your first choice.
Let’s see, hundreds of thousand attend college and this scandal involved a handful of people and very very few admits over many years. It also involved Stanford, Yale, UCLA, UCB, Georgetown and other elite universities. Thankfully most with common sense know it isn’t a reflection of the school, but of a very few bad apples. 99.999% of the students earned their place at the great schools, but some will be bitter regardless. It certainly did highlight how coveted admission to any of these schools really is.
@thecooleststudent Agree with @USCAlum05 and would also suggest posting in the College Search and Admission’s forum for suggestions on other schools to include in your research in addition to USC that offer the combination of science and music you are looking for. There’s a lot of super helpful posters on this site. But you should definitely apply to USC, beside bio, they have some really interesting music minors.
And as explained to me by someone with some USC connections no one else was displaced by those who took part in this “side” door. Evidently there are already “x” number of slots set aside for athletes and that does not affect regular admission. USC obviously does not cap enrollment as their ballooning numbers the last two years have shown although USC has tried to manage the number… So there are no students that would have otherwise gotten in that were left out.
