. . . from the link: http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/university-california-los-angeles/2175544-ucla-oos-applicant-how-in-the-world-are-the-gpas-so-high.html#latest
@UCBUSCalum . . .per your quotes:
Don’t feel badly for responding, I believe that’s what these boards are for. I just bring up the things USC does because it does try to game admissions. Feel free to respond in this thread or not. And I was just initially responding to bluebayou’s post in which he recommended USC without regard to fit, program, and whatever other criteria one has.
Wrt your bold, I don’t think my analysis is overblown. There are various articles at the Daily Trojan that editorialize about the need to do away with the large amount of legacies in both xfer and frosh admits, especially with the high number of them being from what they point out to be non-immediate relationships. I don’t think it’s my place to link the articles here, especially since the mods may object, but if you do a search on “legacy admissions at USC, dailytrojan,” they should queue up near the top.
One of the articles states that among these legacies, there have been some who attend a foreign college (apparently like an exchange student) who only need a “B” average to transfer into USC. I don’t remember off hand if it’s for the entire year or for just one term, but the article was railing against the high number of these legacies and the lower gpa needed for them to be admitted.
And I don’t think you’ll ever be able to find the stats of the frosh admitted in the spring. But if these admits are anything like the ones who were admitted from the private-school example that I gave, then their stats wouldn’t be up to par with USC’s fall admits.
And I’m not questioning whether the USC’s admittance policies are right or wrong; the University being private can effectively do much of what it wants because it’s private. All I’m saying is that one shouldn’t believe without discretion what any university presents on its CDS or profiles; their data should be regarded by whatever means possible: if it presents little, then they should be questioned more; if it presents much, then its data should be more reliable. For UCLA, especially, one can confirm data with (and against) numerous sources:
UCLA Admissions for Frosh: http://www.admission.ucla.edu/Prospect/Adm_fr/Frosh_Prof.htm
UCLA Admissions for Xfers: http://www.admission.ucla.edu/Prospect/Adm_tr.htm
The University of California Dashboards: https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/infocenter/
UCLA CDS 2019-20 (and Previous Years): https://www.apb.ucla.edu/campus-statistics/common-data-set
Let me give you another example how USC most likely inflates its SAT scores but is more subtle in its attempt. In the link you provided,
https://admission.usc.edu/wp-content/uploads/Freshman-Profile-2019.pdf
USC presents its top-end component SAT scores (75th) as being 740 (EBRW) + 790 (M) = 1,530, but it doesn’t provide the combined score. When USC produces a CDS for 2019-20, I’d like to see if it presents the combined, which was apparently recently added on all CDSs, or whether it is at the discretion of the authoring college to present them. Component scores at the 25th and 75th are not individual scores and shouldn’t be combined to present the person’s scores who reside at the 25th and 75th percentiles. On UCLA’s and Stanford’s CDSs both present both component and combined scores that would differ at the 75th:
UCLA, 740 (EBRW) and 790 (M) component totaling 1,530; 1,510 combined
Stanford, 770 (EBRW), 800 (M) component, totaling 1,570; 1,550 combined
Here’s Stanford’s 2019-20 CDS: https://ucomm.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/15/2019/12/stanford-cds-2019.pdf
(Again, noting that UCLA doesn’t superscore which would add ~ 50 points to its 25th and ~ 10 to its 75th, which would bump up its median by ~20-30 points, without regard to its extraneous reportage of ACT and SAT scores.)
So the essence is that USC would like readers of its profile to believe that it’s 75th combined score is 1,530, when it would probably be lower by 10-20 than the sum of their components, like Stanford’s and UCLA’s.
I’ll pretty much agree with this, but I really don’t think that major needs to be a factor, because all three offer excellent programs all throughout; e.g., as I tried to point out to those who are considering entering UCLA for a career in business – in joining the Undergraduate Business Society, taking internships, etc, will be highly successful. Here’s the link to the UBS (in the past, I would have just embedded the link): https://www.uclaubsbruins.com/
Undoubtedly, but the “free-tuition” for those with family incomes ≤ $80,000, described by a few admissions officers as a “PR stunt” that won’t not change much, but will apparently create consistency in USC’s aid program which is a small net good if not necessarily an earth-shattering one.
