<p>Discuss?</p>
<p>Curious what the legacy % is from other colleges/universities.</p>
<p>I was pleased to see that the “yield” had dropped minimally from 34% the previous year. Some (including me) wondered whether the big jump in applications after moving to the Common App would lead to a much bigger drop (much less work for sought-after applicants to apply to USC as yet another school on their list, and one of many offers of admission for most of them).</p>
<p>Here’s what I realize about the “yield” though (cut and pasted from another post of mine): I don’t think it’s useful at all in comparing USC to anyplace else since many other top schools use early decision to improve their “statistics”, by filling a significant percentage of the freshman class through ED (should be close to 100% yield for the ED group). USC has no ED at all. It’s an easy way for any school to improve its yield stats…just “gaming” the college ranking system in a different way. For example: Penn 47% of freshman spots filled thru ED, Columbia 45%, Northwestern 40%, just to cite a few that I came across in a quick Google search. And some schools are hoping/planning to even further increase the percentage of freshman admitted through early ED. So the “yield” comparison will become even murkier as rising yield may simply reflect this higher percentage of ED admits and nothing else.</p>
<p>I actually think that USC’s ability to maintain a similar yield is pretty impressive, without playing the ED game. And yes it moves Spring Admits to Fall Admits but at least it’s pretty transparent…kids know they’re in (as opposed to a Wait List of 1000’s at some schools).</p>
<p>I remember looking at last year’s profile when D was applying. It’s a numerical snapshot of USC that doesn’t begin to describe the vitality and energy of the campus and people there. It was a real eye opener when we visited campus for the first time. D’s loving every minute of USC!</p>
<p>Hundreds more chose to enroll, which is phenomenal…and legacies traditionally are among our best students academically because they come from well educated parents and upper middle class backgrounds.</p>
<p>Ivy League legacy percentage is typically in the 10-15% range. Yale is 13% for Class of 2016.</p>
<p>With all due respect, I suspect SeattleTW is an alumnus of USC. The comment “legacies traditionally are among our best students academically because they come from well educated parents and upper middle class backgrounds” is extraordinary in at least two respects:</p>
<ol>
<li>It is counter to the demonstrated weaker candidacy for legacy applicants across a fairly large sample of institutions: </li>
</ol>
<p>[10</a> Myths About Legacy Preferences in College Admissions - Commentary - The Chronicle of Higher Education](<a href=“10 Myths About Legacy Preferences in College Admissions”>10 Myths About Legacy Preferences in College Admissions)</p>
<p>Perhaps SeatleTW can share admission data for USC contrary to the usual findings. </p>
<ol>
<li>It has a bit of a “Romneyesque” elitism ring to it which might offend some.</li>
</ol>
<p>SeattleTW can be commended for unfiltered Trojan pride :)</p>
<p>My daughter is a HS senior, and USC is far and away her top choice, so I’ve been studying this profile as if it were the Holy Grail. Here are some interesting things that I’ve noticed:</p>
<ol>
<li><pre><code>At LEAST 4600 students with SATs of 2100 or above had to have been rejected. Here’s how I get that number: The 75th percentile SATs for APPLICANTS was 2100, which means there were about 11500 applicants with SATs at or above that level. Further, 75% of ADMITTED students had SATs at or above 2030, and there were 9187 admitted students. 75% of 9187 is about 6890, and subtracting those 6890 from the 11500 applicants with SATs at or above 2100 leaves about 4600 students with SATs above 2100 who did not get in! That’s a lot!
</code></pre></li>
<li><p>A VERY large number of Spring admits must have been bumped to the Fall. USC originally reported its 2012 acceptance rate at 18%, I believe. But the final admit rate is 20%. Doing the math, I believe this means approximately 889 students were accepted AFTER the initial admit rates were announced. Most of these were probably Spring admits. This is a VERY large number; in fact, I believe in past years USC said that there were about 1000 Spring admits. This must mean that virtually all Spring admits were bumped to fall, and this might explain why there seemed to be a number of successful appeals (if the reports on this website are to be believed). It is hard to know what to make of this, however, because I would imagine that there were a number of students who declined USC at the last minute because of the tragic deaths of the Chinese students last April.</p></li>
<li><p>There’s a 4% bump in the enrollment rate of legacy students from last year. I wonder if this is an effect of the large number of Spring admits moved to Fall, or an effect of the former students’ general understanding of the area, which would allow them to put the terrible murders in perspective.</p></li>
<li><p>Despite the huge jump in application numbers, the stats of the admitted and enrolled students are almost identical to last years’. Don’t know what to make of that, if anything.</p></li>
<li><p>The gender balance is off this year, with 52% women. Last year it was 50/50. Does this make it likely that men will have a boost next year? I hope not! </p></li>
<li><p>Unfortunately, I have no idea what any of this means for my Latina legacy daughter with a 2100 SAT, whose unweighted GPA is slightly lower than the average enrolled students (but within the range), whose CR and W scores are higher than the 75% percentile of admitted students, whose M score is significantly lower than the 25% percentile, but who intends to major in humanities (so maybe math doesn’t matter as much . . . ). If anyone can find the answer to this question in the oracle of the student profile, please feel free to pass along the answer. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>In the meantime, I will continue to encourage my daughter to access the SurfCam at Campus Point at UCSB, to remind her that life won’t totally stink if she’s rejected from USC. [url=<a href=“http://www.ucen.ucsb.edu/surfcam.html]UCen”>http://www.ucen.ucsb.edu/surfcam.html]UCen</a> WebCams<a href=“Not%20that%20she’d%20actually%20select%20a%20college%20on%20such%20a%20frivolous%20ground%20.%20.%20.%20.”>/url</a></p>
<p>Steven Sample wrote years ago in his book, The Contrarian’s Guide to Leadership, that historically relatively few USC alumni children enrolled at USC, and that they ended up at other good schools. As USC climbed the rankings, these kids reconsidered USC and began enrolling in larger numbers, demonstrating USC’s enhanced reputation. Regarding the socioeconomic background of USC alumni, they are generally upper middle class, IMO, but that’s based more on my observations, especially for the older alumni like myself.</p>
<p>Do they ever reveal the exact number of spring to fall converts or appeals? I watched CC the day appeals were being notified and it seemed like a lot of students were accepted that way.</p>
<p>From the freshman profile, there are 9187 Fall admits. In the following NYTimes data, originally there are 8381 Fall admits.</p>
<p><a href=“https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0ArlRBr9Qvz0mdEdLNzNsRnBKT3Z1dDZ5QTFCQVV1NkE&output=html[/url]”>2012 Admission Decisions - Google Drive;
<p>Thus, there are 806 bump from Spring to Fall, and the figure should include successful appeal to Fall 2012.</p>
<p>Yup, it is a big number.</p>
<p>We’d have to compare to other schools after adjusting for admits off the wait list at those other schools. Spring bumps to fall are USC’s version of a wait list</p>
<p>This is the first year SC has used the common application. The number of applicants rose by a large number. I am guessing there are always adjustments when a new system is initiated. </p>
<p>SC still is one of the most ethnically diverse universities. Representation from different high schools is a record at 1476. It also offers opportunity for those who are the first in their family to enroll in college. In the 2008 entering class 11% of the freshmen were the first to enter college. This year’s class has 14% who are the first in their family to attend. National Merit Scholars rose again from 232 in 2009 to 251 in this class.</p>
<p>Admission remains need blind. A majority of the students receive financial aid. Freshmen retention is 97%. For a large university the student/faculty ratio is very good at 9 to 1.</p>
<p>Incidentally, legacy students were 23% of the 2008 entering class.</p>
<p>Just an offtopic question here, but I was just wondering how much the mid year grades factor into admission. I have been trying to work hard this first semester of senior year, but with 6 AP classes the amount of homework doesn’t give me much time to study so most of my grades are in the low 80s to 90s. I’ve got a 2170 SAT and 3.75 GPA, so I’m pretty borderline.</p>
<p>Does anyone have any information on this?</p>
<p>The sad deaths of the two International students last April had a considerable impact on international enrollment (last year–15%, current freshman 10%). It seems reasonable that this decrease would also impact the appeals/spring admit situation.</p>
<p>Following are the number of scholarships for the last 2 years (I put this in another thread too):</p>
<p>2011 -2012 ,2012 - 2013
------------ ,-----------
Mork – 20 ,20
Stamps – NA ,5
Trustee – 140 ,114
Presidential – 349 ,366
Dean – 107 ,100
other – 63 ,75</p>
<p>National Merit – 247 ,251</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Or the European recession and the substantial slowdown in the Chinese economy made internationals less willing to afford US colleges.</p>
<p>Thank you for pointing that out, vinceh. Your theory makes more sense. I find it hard to believe that it would have a “considerable impact” on international enrollment. It didn’t effect our decision to send our S there, although we are not internationals.</p>
<p>Since a large portion of the international students come from Asia, I’m afraid I think the impact of those sad deaths on families sending students far from home may have been considerable. It was certainly a circumstance that the Adcoms could never have predicted when they sent out original admissions decision, but the timing could well have affected matriculation decisions. </p>
<p>Even so, a 5 % drop in international students would only account for about 150 students. I’m also surprised to see a larger than usual class of 2016, since USC could have controlled that number by moving fewer up from Spring, right? This must have been their target number?</p>
<p>Those are good points, Madbean. My guess is that the target class size is about 3000, and that there was a lower level of attrition over the Summer than usual. That makes sense from a psychological standpoint – the kids bumped up from Spring may have valued their Fall admissions more as a group than they otherwise would have, and may have been less inclined to accept admission offers from other wait lists. After all, we often value things more that are harder to attain.</p>
<p>One additional thing that is interesting from the numbers: USC has been accused by some churlish folks, at least on these boards, of artificially inflating its admission statistics by having so many Spring Admits. The implication of the accusers has been that the Spring admits must have substantially lower stats than the Fall admits, and that if they were included in the Fall admission numbers, USC’s stats would drop significantly. </p>
<p>But if we are correct that an usually high number of Spring Admits were bumped to Fall this year – and the data certainly suggest that this was the case – then this year’s Freshman Profile seems to suggest that the Spring Admits have stats on par with the Fall Admits. Both the admitted and enrolled stats are almost identical to last years’, but if the Spring Admits had had significantly lower stats, I think that there would have been a bigger gap between the admitted and enrolled stats this year. At the very least, this years’ data shows that the inclusion of a very large number of Spring Admits into the total accepted and enrolled student pool did not result in a material change from the accepted and enrolled students’ stats from last year. I think this suggests that the Spring Admit stats are similar to the Fall Admits (or at least in the mid-75%).</p>
<p>This seems to contradict the claim by some that USC has somehow gamed the US News rankings through the use of Spring Admits. </p>
<p>Thoughts? Does this logic make sense? (By the way, I don’t really care very much about stats at all; I just like playing with numbers. What impresses me most about USC is the vibrancy of the student body and the incredibly talented students in the arts and other fields that don’t lend themselves to quantifiable measures).</p>
<ol>
<li>International Students. Without going through all the math, there are 138 fewer internationals in this year’s incoming class versus last year. Do I think the murder of two Asian students off-campus had an effect on international applications? Yes. I also believe that it impacted some domestic apps as well. However, if we restrict the discussion to Asia, I believe that the sudden slowing in the Chinese economy from 8% annual growth to near stagnancy has an equal or greater impact. I believe that people vote with their wallets and to me it’s noticeable that the growth in the international student population at USC closely mirrored the go-go growth years of the Chinese economy. Since SC doesn’t provide admissions statistics by year by country it’s impossible to do anything but guess on the underlying causes. </li>
</ol>
<p>For what it’s worth, the % internationals by class:</p>
<p>'07 - '08: 7%
'08 - '09: 6%
'09 - '10: 11%
'10 - '11: No Data - I couldn’t find the equivalent pdf for this class
'11 - '12: 15%
'12 - '13: 10%</p>
<p>The average international percentage for the classes detailed - 9.8%.</p>
<ol>
<li>The agita about Spring Admits - The statistics for Fall admits and Fall Enrollees have remained virtually static going all the way back to the '07-'08 class. Enrollee UWGPA/mid-point SAT/Yield:</li>
</ol>
<p>'07 - '08: 3.7/2035/35%
'08 - '09: 3.7/2055/35%
'09 - '10: 3.7/2040/33%
'10 - '11: No Data - I couldn’t find the equivalent pdf for this class
'11 - '12: 3.72/2075/34%
'12 - '13: 3.70/2070/33%</p>
<p>So barring evidence of a concerted, ongoing 6-year conspiracy to exclude spring admit statistics in the enrollee numbers, I can see no statistical support for the idea that somehow this year’s entering class is riddled with slack-jawed, drooling, knuckles scraping the sidewalk Spring-Admit-oafs. In fact, academically it’s hard to see how this class looks any different from any other that’s matriculated at USC in the last 6 years.</p>