Is very important and holds a tremendous amount of weight be careful who you receive information from…
From USC SCion website:
However, it’s important to us that our population of Scions is represented among the entering class; roughly 19 percent of the first-year students joining USC for the 2017-2018 school year are Scions. But, legacy status is, on its own, not going to be the deciding factor in the evaluation of a student’s application. There are many factors that we are considering when making our decisions, and legacy status is just one part of that.
@zhenzhen888 You really need more data than that paragraph to put it in perspective, then math will come into play, whether you are good at it or not. A large percent of legacy apply and many many many are rejected. Those 19% that get in would have got in anyway, the legacy wasn’t the big push, it was just a nice little gold star on their file, but there are lots of gold stars put on a file of someone accepted. While it helps, it carries very little weight in the scheme of things. Being a legacy does not over ride bad grades or a bad essay. It will not help an average student. The legacy that are admitted are strong students in their own right. They have said they could fill the entire class with qualified legacy students but of course they don’t do that. So you may see 19% as high using simple math, but given amount that apply with strong stats and legacy, it is not. One needs to really understand the admission process to understand how legacy plays. It’s good, but not all that you are implying.
While SCions may currently make up circa 19% of the freshman class, or around 570 of the projected 3,000, the amount of preference applied during the admission process is far less than what many may expect or hope for. USC now sees 10,000+ SCion applications each admission cycle. USC could - but is not going to - fill its entire freshman class of 3,000 or so with SCions alone, but that is never going to happen. Even if they did so, 1000s of SCion applicants would still be disappointed. In reality, in recent years, over 80% of SCions have been rejected too. Many are offered TTP as as an option, but clearly 1000s of SCion families are disappointed annually. The #s applying are simply too great, and the reality is that roughly only 1000-1500 or so get admitted each year. Even then, many choose to still enroll elsewhere, leaving only 570 or so actually entering USC as freshman.