Spring Admission: Pros & Cons

<p>Nope, not saying that at all and you know that. I’m just saying that the best pro about doing spring admission is that eventually, you WILL end up at UNIVERSITY OF ****ING SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA!!! HELLL YEAAAH!</p>

<p>The thought of getting four months off to recover from High School sounds like heaven!</p>

<p>“recover” lol?</p>

<p>Personally, I think that being offering spring admission is better than wait listing . . .</p>

<p>Texnition, so I really considered for a while maybe going to my state university for the semester since I am not from california, but ultimately, I decided to move to LA for the semester and take CC classes at Santa Monica College. Santa Monica college is probably the best place because they have an articulation agreement with USC and it has the highest number of transfers to 4 year colleges( i think it is like the 3rd best in the country) so people are generally smart and my film 1 teacher actually taught at Harvard for awhile. Also, since CC classes are only 3 units instead of 4, I was able to take 4 GE classes and 1 business class for my major. People here were actually really jealous because I am almost done with my GEs and I got all As in my classes. Once you start at USC, you cannot take GEs at a CC. Also, a ton of people go to SMC as spring admits. In every single one of my classes there, there was at leastone spring admit. I made friends with people in my classes and we went to football games together as well as orientation later in the year!</p>

<p>My sister applied for fall 2008. She got in for spring 2009. USC was the only school she would consider. She had a ton of great schools she could have entered for fall. She only wanted USC. She stayed home and went to a junior college her first semester. She got about 18 units out of the way. It was hard when all of her friends went away and she was still home, but the semester went by fast. She ended up with horrible housing at USC. An Apartment behind the row. Way off campus. Her room mate was also a spring admit, she liked her. Her other room mates were juniors. Not much in common. She missed out on the dorm experience, which I still think she regrets not having. She wasn’t able to rush until the following year. Guys can rush in the spring. My sister is extremely outgoing. We only live about an hour away so she was able to attend all the football games in the fall, so she made the best of a not so great situation. I do think now she wishes she was more open minded about other schools. My advice to you is that if you do accept a spring admit be on top of your housing. They are not very nice to work with, so be on top of it from the start, because once they have placed you it is hard to move. The problem with the dorm is most of them are freshman, and freshman don’t usually go abroad until there spring semester, so that is why you get stuck with juniors in off campus apartments, because juniors are the ones going abroad. Be persistent about getting a dorm if there is an opening. USC is a great school and worth the wait for some, but remember that first year you may feel a little lost. Luckily I have been accepted to SCA for fall 2010, so I won’t have the same experience as my sister. Good luck in making your decisions.</p>

<p>@mmorey - how did you move to LA? Did you find an apartment or did you have relatives that you could stay with?</p>

<p>i’d also like to know more about how to make the housing situation easier. that’s probably the one thing that’s scaring me about this spring admit deal.</p>

<p>Yes housing is important to me as well. I would like to live in a dorm with other freshmen and not be in an apartment</p>

<p>Maybe my experience is way off, since I only personally know three spring admits, but I can’t see that protecting USC’s stats was the issue since all of these kids are outstanding. One decided not to attend, as she preferred Northwestern and one of the top LAC’s to which she was accepted with big merit $. One is an NMF. The last is an international who was a superb student in her home country and remains a top student at USC. My kid, who was a fall admit, is friends with spring admits and there is no sense that these students are “less than” in any way. Especially in some of the majors that have single digit admissions stats, even if the spring admits were somehow ranked lower in the initial admissions process, how big a difference can there possibly be between being at the 96th percentile of the applicant pool versus being at the 94th percentile of the applicant pool?</p>

<p>I agree with Nester</p>

<p>Think Spring admit = new opportunities… I myself have been deferred to Spring. Sure, I may sort of feel like a second class student having to wait till Spring to start, but that only means that we get an extended summer and opportunities to do activities other kids don’t get to do. For example, why don’t you take a language course? Or volunteer somewhere (a friend of mine is going to volunteer work in Puerto Rico). Do an internship in your career of interest? or just… chill out?
Think of it as a safety net. Or if not, you can go to another school for a semester and attend USC in the Spring. Maybe you’ll end up staying in the other school cause it’ll grow on you. who knows.</p>

<p>I hope that helped!</p>

<p>I read somewhere that some of the spring admits were getting apartments at University Gateway which is very close to the freshman dorms and taking classes at a near by Community College (maybe Santa Monica?).</p>

<p>^I head that too. The only concern is the apartment gives out 12 month leases which can be pretty dicey over the summer. At least, that’s what I heard. Please correct me if I’m wrong because I really want to do this.</p>

<p>“I read somewhere that some of the spring admits were getting apartments at University Gateway which is very close to the freshman dorms and taking classes at a near by Community College (maybe Santa Monica?).”</p>

<p>That’s exactly what my daughter is doing, and, using Facebook, she was quickly able to find 3 other girls doing exactly the same thing who she will be rooming with at University Gateway come September.</p>

<p>norcalryan, I’m not sure what you mean by “dicey”. The lease at University Gateway is for a calendar year, but you can choose to pay it in 10 months if you wish.</p>