<p>I attend a private Catholic high school that is competitive academically.</p>
<p>EC's
-volunteer at local hospital over the summer for 44 total hours
-volunteer at number one hospital in northern va throughout this school year. I will end with 150 hours total
-active volunteer for non-profit organization, LINK, through which I help out at holiday food drives and delicer food to less fortunate a few times a month
-work at local water park for the past 2 summers and will be supervisor there this summer
-captain of field hockey team</p>
<p>Seeing as how you play field hockey, I’m going to assume you’re out-of-state.</p>
<p>Is your GPA weighted or unweighted? If that’s your unweighted, then you stand a pretty good chance. If it’s weighted, you’d do better to get your ACT and/or SAT scores up.</p>
<p>I got in back in 2011 with similar stats. (Weighted 3.43; ACT 25; SAT 1230) But I’m in-state and the numbers get more and more competitive each year, especially with the football and baseball programs doing so well. They’ve really put the school on more people’s radars. There’s also the continued number one IB program and the number one Honors College. All of that together creates a recipe for more difficult admissions.</p>
<p>I definitely think you’re in the ballpark of getting in and have a good shot.</p>
<p>Your GPA and test score look good, definitely in the range of most accepted students. Your academics should be in the top half (barely) of accepted students so I don’t see why they wouldn’t accept you.</p>
<p>A few of years ago there was some controversy where some in-state people claimed that out of state students were being given preference over in-state students in order to bring in more tuition money (higher tuition fees). But during the last couple of years I believe it has become very apparent that they are actually tougher on out of state students.</p>
<p>I remember one very dissapointed out of state applicant posting on this forum that they had been rejected, despite a pretty respectable (above average) GPA and SAT score.</p>
<p>Last year several of my son’s best friends at USC were private Catholic high school students from the northeast, so they seem to do pretty well as far as getting accepted, and his current roommate is from Mass.</p>
<p>I may be wrong, but I really don’t think that they put a lot of weight into EC’s, although being captain of a team may help if it is close call.</p>
<p>In addition to some of the sports teams doing REALLY well, like AU mentioned, the selection of the USC honors colleges as being rated #1 in the country probably also resulted in some really good students considering SC who would have otherwise not even considered it.</p>
<p>In my son’s major (music-trumpet), USC had never really had many out of state students until this year. One of the most famous trumpet players in the world now teaches at USC, and magically they had some really good trumpet playing music major freshmen (as in really really good) apply from all over the country. Somehow, I don’t think that is a coincidence.</p>
<p>Personally, I am excited about the possibility of the school climbing in the rankings because that adds some value to the degrees that USC students get.</p>
<p>I think you have a good shot of getting accepted with your stats and ECs. Imagep is right, the standards for out-of-state students are much higher than those for in-state students. In fact, there is now an 85 point gap between the average SAT scores for the two groups. It’s difficult to extend that gap to the ACT because it is not the metric USC generally cites, but it seems like that would translate to one or two points above the school’s average.</p>