Hi everyone,
What is the benefit of having a legacy to USC? One of my parents attended USC for graduate school. I thought it would have no impact because I’m applying as an undergraduate.
Thanks!
It will always benefit you, but I wouldn’t expect it doing major miracles. Graduate/undergraduate shouldn’t matter that much, a Trojan is a Trojan. It’ll mean the difference between getting selected over someone with a similar profile who isn’t legacy. Nikias commented at one point that legacy applicants have far higher scores across the board than the typical applicant… and although USC loves legacies like any private school, they’re really held back by public scrutiny (i.e. jealousy) regarding nepotism and admitting any legacy student that happens to fall within the score range.
For what it’s worth as a minor anecdote, a lady I did business with is both an alumnus and part-time business professor at USC and her daughter didn’t even get extended a spring admission despite having some good scores. She got into UCLA, Cal, Pomona, Amherst… she decided to go on the 1 year transfer track and is now finally at USC. As a first-gen college student myself, I think the above was a major oversight, and I do think legacy should play a bigger role than it does now, but apparently it doesn’t. To give you an idea, USC is about 20% legacy while Harvard/Princeton are about 30-35%. I would still definitely feel more confident in my chances though, just not overly confident.
I think it is worth much less than it use to be, USC is going in an entirely new direction in the last 5 years and abandoning many legacy families, even those with phenomenal scores who may or may not have been consistent donors. There have been forums pop up just on this subject. So many students have ties to USC that they can’t give them all a bump and some have actually implied that it can hurt, but I think more likely it has no impact. Now if you can buy a building, that’s another story…