Have Two Questions

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Southern California
1

So I am looking into USC, but I’m starting to have some concerns about it.

1: Will it look at all my courses or just my G.P.A.? Reason being is that I am in a district that has a 5.0 scale and only core classes have 5.0 weighted. All electives are based on a 4.0, so just taking say P.E., Health, and a few other graduation requirements lowers my GPA as is no matter what grade I get

2: By the AP Credit transfer, what does it mean? Does it mean that I can count those waiver courses towards the waiver and still have the extra 32 elective credits i can put in other course? I got very confused on that

Thanks ahead of time.

2

I’ll try to answer…

  1. USC will look at the courses you took, the rigor (was it the highest level offered at your school?), and the unweighted GPA. Their admissions reps are familiar with all (most of?) the sending HS's in their regions and they even take into account which schools are known to grade inflate and those that are deflated.
  2. Some AP courses (with 4 or 5 on AP test) will waive you out of Core requirements at USC. Only a few. For those classes, if you are eligible for credit, you will receive the units of credit and not have to take the equivalent course at USC. For most other AP courses, they will not get you out of requirements, but if you score 4 or 5, they will be counted as Elective units. You will need 128 units to graduate for most BA degrees, so you'll need to take all req courses in your major (or 2 majors!) and all req in your minor (if you choose a minor) and all Core classes (minus the 2 or so that you can waive out of if you took the related APs), and 3 semesters of a language for most majors--unless you waive out of some or all of those semesters. I believe getting a 4-5 on an AP Language class will waive you out of the FL requirement, but will not give you unit credits. Some students find that with their majors, minors, Core, language, etc, they actually are almost up to 128 units! Even though they may have earned 32 units of Elective credit from their other APs, they don't really need those units. Don't worry, though. Your adviser is really good at explaining all this at orientation where they help you plan your schedule and register for classes.
3
  1. The admissions officer will definitely look at all your courses. They will likely be familiar with your school and its grading policies, so the different grading system definitely won't count against you. Don't worry about it; this will be the same for pretty much any college/university you apply to.
  2. I'm not sure about this, but I'm pretty sure you can put the AP courses towards the waiver and still have the 32 credits. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.