<p>Hey guys,
so I'm thinking we do an analysis/prediction of admissions for next year.</p>
<p>I'm thinking that USC right now is hungry for prestige. Real hungry.
Its acceptance rate dropped a whopping 5% last year and should drop another 1-2% this year. The average SAT is only going to go up I'm thinking around 2150.</p>
<p>Driving forces: 6 billion dollar endowment campaign, $110 million gift for scholarships (In turn, USC will offer full scholarships to attract the Harvard, Yale, etc. students)</p>
<p>The school is just getting super hard to get into... </p>
<p>okay so you’re saying that if I got a 2050 on my SAT (but I’m planning on taking it again and hopefully getting around a 2100-2150) and have like a 3.69 unweighted but i’m in a ton of extracurriculars that I probably will not get in?</p>
<p>Neither one of these statements is true. There is no basis for projecting the acceptance rate will decline 2% this year - it will likely be higher than last year (in my opinion) because they assumed yield would hold steady in the face of a huge increase in applications after going to common app, and it did not. (This is anecdotal - these figures are not available yet so far as I know, but there were a lot of spring admits moved up to fall and successful rejection appeals, judging from posts here on CC.)</p>
<p>No one knows what the magic formula will be but if you look at this year’s accepted students thread, anoeltner you would seem to have a decent shot.</p>
<p>On the contrary, historically schools shifting to the CommonApp see a huge increase in applications the first year and an additional smaller increase the second year. For example, two years ago Michigan made the shift and saw an approximately 26% increase in apps followed by a 10% growth on top of that this past year. In SC’s first year they saw a 25% jump. I see no reason to assume that their application growth should follow a different pattern than Michigan’s, therefore one could reasonably project an additional 1.5-2.5% drop in the admissions rate down to about 16-17%.</p>
<p>Yield is irrelevant to the applicant. The applicant only cares about how much competition they’re facing. As for Admissions misjudging this year’s yield, I’ll wait for the facts and not jump to conclusions based on the anecdotal “evidence” of a few statistically insignificant posts on an open internet forum.</p>
<p>So, do you think that the move to the Common App and any yield issues that may have resulted will change Admissions’ consideration of demonstrated interest? Will they perhaps consider it more than in the past?</p>
<ol>
<li><p>What yield issue? Yield fluctuates every year, that’s why, in spite of complicated algorithms, Admissions Offices (including HYPMS) have wait-lists, or in USC’s case, Spring Admits. The entire point of Spring Admits/Wait-lists is to insure that the Admissions Office has a pool of interested candidates to draw from in case a given year’s initial yield is lower than expected. </p></li>
<li><p>Demonstrated Interest. I don’t see how that can be a big factor in Admissions decisions. If you base it off of campus visits then you unfairly discriminate against geographically distant or financially strapped applicants. Does a campus visit hurt your chances? No, but I doubt it will ever make up more low GPA or SAT/ACT numbers.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>USC will only achieve greatness when it reduces its classes of transfer students significantly. We admit far too many (relative to other top privates) and need to focus on reducing the number of transfer students and making up for lost revenue by increasing our endowment. USC should admit 500 transfers per year tops, IMO.</p>
<p>These two statements contradict each other. Yield is highly relevant to the applicant, because it directly affects the number of students that will be accepted in subsequent years and the overall acceptance rate. USC accepted virtually the same number of applicants pre- and post- common app. I thought it was a mistake when they said that was the plan (although NONE of us knows until the numbers come out). Seeing as I’m the parent of a spring admit in the first common app cycle who was bumped up to fall within a couple days of the national decision date, anecdotally I think I’m right.</p>
<p>I can also tell you that at the accepted students event we attended, it was pretty clear reading between the lines in talking with an adcom that they knew they had a problem. I got a strong signal in April that a bump to fall would be coming.</p>
<p>Yield is no factor to the applicant. The applicant is only affected by whether or not he/she receives an offer. Subsequent admission rates are completely irrelevant to this year’s applicant. You’re either accepted or you aren’t. Your child was accepted, yield (if your interpretation is correct) only came into play in by affecting when he/she starts not whether they were accepted to USC.</p>
<p>Respectfully, you are one data point, I prefer to wait for the actual results before deciding if USC “clearly has a problem”.</p>
<p>I think Vinceh will prove to be correct that the admit rate will continue to drop next year for several reasons. First, I expect that a % of students and their counselors/parents don’t really take note of the changes to a common app until the second year. Secondly, an 18% admit rate will pull interest from high performing students who would not be interested in a school with a 23% admit rate. Third, USC has a great deal to offer students who want a LAC education, but also a diverse and rich university experience. Both the Thematic Options Honors program and merit awards will likely pull more students from top LAC colleges and universities. At present, I don’t think many know about these options, but will become familiar with them as they seriously consider applying to USC.</p>
<p>The freshmen profile is usually posted in late September. Then the speculation will end.</p>
<p>Sometimes the Daily Trojan has an article about admissions after the fall semester has begun. Perhaps that will have more information about numbers.</p>
<p>Am looking forward to the actual numbers when posted. In the meantime, here is something I came across (the rough application/admit numbers look like those for 2012 but the freshman profile that’s on that page is still from 2011). I think these numbers look pretty impressive and expect that USC will draw even more interest this coming application cycle:</p>
<p>Last year, almost 46,100 students applied for 2,950 places in the freshman class. Approximately 20 percent were offered admission, and one-third of that group enrolled. Men and women apply to USC in equal numbers; most freshmen come from the top 10 percent of their high school class. USC receives applications from every state in the U.S. and almost one hundred countries, resulting in an unusually bright, talented and diverse student body.</p>
<p>I think the admit rate will actually creep UP a few points in this next cycle (somewhat dependent on number of applications obviously), that is, if my theory that yield percentage for class of 2016 fall admits was far lower than plan. At this time next year I likely will not care, but it is interesting to consider how these things work.</p>
<p>And that was my point to the students so far posting on this thread: this year may be the beginning of a sharp upward trend in difficulty of gaining an offer of admission, or it may be an outlier; either way, don’t despair.</p>
<p>I think it is funny when someone suggests that a school with 47,000 applicants will have a problem filling their class of 2,950…</p>
<p>
“a lot?” I didn’t go back to count, but I am thinking I saw a total of maybe 15-20 posters this year saying their appeal was accepted or who had been bumped up. There are spring admits bumped up and successful appeals every year. If you consider that there are 127 posts on the “decisions” thread, that represents about 2.7% of the applicants this year posting on college confidential at all, let alone that they had been bumped up or had their rejection reversed. Not exactly a representative sample… We have not heard from 97.3% of applicants.</p>
<p>And if we heard from as many as 20 here on college confidential who were bumped up or had their rejection reversed (I’ll let someone else do the counting - I think it was probably less than 20), that would represent 0.04% of applicants… </p>
We have parents of spring admits bumped to fall posting from the entering class of 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011 that I know of, and yet the yield those years has held steady between 32% and 35%. Those students were also bumped within a couple of days of the national decision date. To say that because a student was bumped up this year in the same manner as the past several years the yield must have gone down does not make sense.</p>
<p>
Not likely. USC has overenrolled every year as long as I have been watching (5 years), and they use both the spring admits and the SGRs for transfer applicants to manage enrollment - there will not be a problem finding enough students to fill the class. In fact, I saw from infocus’ post that they increased their target to 2,950 this year - they have targeted 2,600 the last several years. So it seems they were leaving a cushion in case MORE accepted students chose USC - I would bet that USC has all bases covered in their switch to the Common Ap.</p>
<p>
Those stats would put you below the “middle 50%,” but the fact is 25% of accepted students are, by definition, below the “middle 50%.” Why not you?</p>
<p>oops! I meant to say that 127 applicants posting on the decisions thread represents 0.27% of applicants with 99.73% of applicants NOT posting their results - not 2.7%.</p>
<p>^ Conjecture on everyone’s part. That’s been stated repeatedly. </p>
<p>No one ever said they wouldn’t be able to fill the class - the question was the percentage of initial fall admits that deposited at USC. </p>
<p>From what I’ve seen I’m not sure USC breaks out of their yield percentage the proportion of initial fall admits, spring admits that were moved up, and rejection appeals that were used to fill the class. So the answer may not be known ever.</p>
<p>I’m also curious how other universities report yield. How do they account for waitlisted students that they pull off the waitlist? Not sure they put those waitlisters in their initial admit pool which affects yield calculations the same way.</p>
<p>I’d think this was analogous to USC’s use of spring admits (who then may be moved up). The advantage to the USC admit is she/he knows they can attend (unlike the nervous waitlister)–although perhaps the start date may be less than perfect.</p>
<p>USC’s acceptance rate hasn’t dropped below 20% yet; it’s currently 20-21% including spring admits, which many people ignore (and this doesn’t even take into account the high # transfers, as pointed out by SeattleW). Many universities experience a decrease in yield in the year they join the Common App, because there’s more overlap with other schools - students will apply to more than one of the Common App schools because it’s easier. Some schools have experienced a decrease in applications the next year. It’s impossible to say what USC’s # will be next year, given the number of factors that can influence it (e.g. outreach). Fundraising campaigns don’t have an effect on this usually; even USC’s campaign is mostly devoted to non-undergraduate areas, which contribute more to the prestige of the university than the undergrad division does. Increasing the stature of the university seems to be USC’s primary goal, but the effects of the campaign on that won’t be felt for quite a while (15+ years). In several years, the campaign may influence applications.</p>
<p>IMO USC should start an early program, ED or SCEA. That would help boost its yield at least 10-15 percentage points. It could also do away with spring admits and make greater use of the waitlist. That’s how top-20 private schools work, and USC ostensibly aspires to be one of them.</p>
<p>Why use a waitlist when the spring admissions work just fine? What advantages come with a waitlist? Not sure they really want or need ED (another trick to boost yield as you mentioned), since their incredibly generous merit awards tend to persuade many top students to attend. Instead of getting very committed, mostly full pay slightly weaker admits (ED), USC instead gets a chance to woo (at Explore USC) tip top ivy-level admits whom they draw, admittedly, with very big $$ for NMF and other top awards.</p>
<p>The reason to switch to a waitlist over spring admissions is mostly ethical. Currently, USC doesn’t report spring admits in its overall acceptance rate, and it excludes these students from its stats like average SAT and GPA (spring admits tend to be weaker on average than fall admits). Both of these allow USC to seem more selective than it truly is. It’s disingenuous, and it’s not something that any top private does. Waitlists allow universities to fine-tune their classes without resorting to trickery. With the increasing graduation rate at USC, it should be more feasible to eliminate spring admissions.</p>
<p>An early program would allow them to gauge who has the most interest in USC. Sure, merit aid helps, but wouldn’t merit aid + early program help even more? Princeton, for example, offers extremely generous aid (what would often be considered merit at most universities, including USC), and its yield jumped 18% with its re-institution of an early program. If USC wants to compete with top schools, it needs a higher yield, and early programs help with that a lot.</p>
<p>If USC utilized an early program, and did it well, it could have a yield in the mid-high 40s (so its acceptance rate this year would have been 13%, likely leading to more qualified students on the whole).</p>