<p>According to the USC freshman profile, 8634 were accepted but only 2763 enrolled. Is this accurate? Because it seems drastic. I mean, how can they offer admission to more people than they have room for? And if they have more room, shouldn't that room be filled with people on waiting lists, ect?</p>
<p>They know that not all will end up going to USC because of various reasons, one being the cost of a USC education.</p>
<p>also, its very unlikely that many of those students applied to only one school. look around at some other schools, you'll see a lot of similar statistics.</p>
<p>Right. I understand that, but when you offer admission to three times the amount of people you have room for, it just seems strange, is all. I guess I wasn't looking for an answer so much, just someone else who thinks it's weird. I understand from previous statistics they have an idea of how many people they can accept, but what would happen if more people accepted admission than they were counting on? And what if the world ended tomorrow...Yeah, I know.</p>
<p>LOL, well, I'll admit it's a bit weird. But it's not unusual, really, it's more standard practice. </p>
<p>It's also based on the fact that USC in general does not waitlist, so they can't just admit more people off a waitlist if there are fewer than expected matriculants.</p>
<p>Plus, a significant percentage of people are admitted march or sooner - this gives them a real good estimate of what the yield rate is going to be. They doa pretty good job predicting, too.</p>
<p>What would happen if more matriculated than they expect? They could trim the number of accepted transfer students, for one thing. Alternatively, each individual department can adjust around it's faculty and course schedule. More freshmen then expected? Offer some more sections of freshmen classes. Next year, don't admit as many freshmen, so the total number of students in the university is at an equilibrium by next fall - you've only messed up your expectations for one year only, not a full four years.</p>
<p>Also, instead of the yield rate for the university as a whole fluctuating wildly, much more likely is the number of people admitted to specific majors might vary a lot from year to year. So individual schools and departments are fairly used to dealing with things like that.</p>
<p>Even at schools like Harvard the yield is under 60%
so at slightly less competitive schools like USC yield being around 35% is not at all uncommon</p>