USC Class of 2025 — Regular Decision

I sent an email to my AO with accomplishments including a first-place State award as well this past week. I also have yet to hear anything besides the automatic reply.

USC in particular is a bit confusing for me about mid-year grade requirements. If you apply before Dec 1, seems the letter those applicants get in Jan/Feb concludes with requesting those grades from all 40k plus applicants. Yet on their website Q/A section, it clearly says that for some, grades will be asked for. But not all? Finally, an AO said you should send them only when asked, and if not asked, they have everything they need. I guess the best course of action is to just send. But other schools are more clear about what they expect.

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Lol we didn’t even get that :slight_smile:

What do you mean by the automatic reply? I had sent my counselor an email of new accomplishments about a month ago and I was given a reply that said like thank you for informing, consider your accomplishment received. My counselor replied to my in under two days but not sure if they really even considered my email.

Oh that’s interesting. I remember getting emails from the admissions office to send my reports because my school didn’t finalize ours till early march which is later than most but I think they just sent those mass emails to everyone who had not submitted theirs.

It might differ from counselor to counselor.

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Colleges say they are “need blind” but it’s really not true. When you check the financial aid box you are at a slight disadvantage.

The schools know by zip code, etc etc which students will be full pay.

They can not afford to admit a class of only financial need students - using an extreme- so they budget what they want the average paid revenue per student to be. The class is shaped that way.

However, within the bucket of candidates you are being evaluated against, then it is need blind. But that’s almost meaningless at that point.

You can check this statement by looking at the average tuition paid year to year.

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This may have been answered already, but do we know what time of day decisions are coming out at?

Tuesday, March 30th

Not sure what specific time, but they said they would send an email when decisions were out. Does USC usually release them in a certain time frame? Either way it will be a brutal wait for those on the East Coast.

Some people are saying 5PM EST/PST, I haven’t been able to find anything else.

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Last year decisions were released in ‘Waves’. International first, then east coast, then midwest, then west coast. Something like noon PT, 12:30pt, etc. The last ‘wave’ of results released around 3pm PT - in California. No guarantee that pattern will repeat but its worth mentioning.

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hi yall!! im new to cc, i’m an applicant to school of dramatic arts. i was just wondering, it doesn’t really mean anything if i got a mid year transcript request in early march does it? my parents are like convinced it means something b/c my counselor definitely had already sent it in and they requested it directly from me, but i don’t feel like it’s necessarily a sign one way or another and i don’t want them to keep getting their hopes up. anyone have insight?

No, it just means they didn’t have it. If counselor had actually sent it in and/or they had it, they would not be asking for a duplicate from you just for fun. My guess would be they didn’t get it from counselor, system, etc. Good luck though!

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For anyone living on the East Coast: I checked last year’s thread, and people were receiving decisions from 3-4 PM EST. It could be different this year, but that’s what I saw.

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will this happen this year too? i know usc released international results on 24/3 instead of 26/3 last year

Does anyone have links to any reddit threads for USC? People mentioned getting info from different reddit threads but I wasn’t able to find anything.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ApplyingToCollege/comments/klftro/university_of_southern_california_rd_megathread/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

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I recieved the following reply (automatic):

“Hello,
Thank you for your email and interest in USC. The Office of Admission is experiencing a high volume of emails at this time.
Here are some quick answers to commonly asked questions:
For questions related to Financial Aid, please contact the Office of Financial Aid at 213-740-4444 or finaid@usc.edu ·
Our processing team is working hard to go through the tens of thousands of documents received for transfer and first year applications. If we are still missing an important document when we review your application, we will reach out. Until that point, please don’t panic about missing documents in your portal.
If you are emailing with an update to your application, consider it received. I will add a note to your file.
For all other questions about USC as well as the freshman or transfer admission process, I encourage you to visit:
USC FAQ Website: www.usc.edu/askusc
USC Admission Blog: https://admissionblog.usc.edu
USC Instagram @uscadmission
Thank you for your patience. Fight On!”

Since this is the first year post covid shutdown - which dramatically changed their notification structure that they had in place for decades - we only have one year of history to go on versus years and years. Rejections came out around same time as acceptances, by region. This is totally new for them as acceptances always rolled out first with all rejections at the very end. They broke with tradition and ripped off the bandaid, sending them out together.

I would guess they would roll at noon PST again, but just a guess. Not sure of the order, but here is what they did last year:

International decisions started exactly at noon, with first post to cc at 12:01pm.

At 12:20pm the east coast was swept with both acceptances and rejections at the same time.

Midwest started rolling at 12:34pm from KY to CO

1:11 was first CA acceptance - but just a couple and a bit of a pause on west coast.

1:40 was first Texas acceptance, but TX rejections rolled about 15 minutes before that.

3:15 - 4:00pm CA and west coast rolled out. Took awhile.

They say they will email you when portal updates, but emails come after and besides, people aren’t waiting for an email - they are refreshing portal every nanosecond.

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