My daughter received an email today about signing up for housing. That was the first email she has received. As parents, we have not received anything from USC, but have received emails from the other two schools she was accepted to on Friday.
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There is a link in their portal that will take you to the accepted student day events. I believe you have to be logged in to access it.
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My daughter is weighing the pros and cons of McCarthy vs Birnkrant. McCarthy has AC so that is a huge pro, but she loves the ‘open door’ mentality of Birnkrant. She is hoping to make friends through her housing and it seems like they both have different ways of making that happen. McCarthy has a retreat but the rooms themselves seem less social. Do any of the current/past parents have feedback? Unfortunately she has to pick by Wednesday which is before we can get down to USC.
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We live too far away to visit on short notice, but it sounds so fun. We will visit at some point soon. I’ll contact Thornton then. I’m not surprised I couldn’t find the links, the way our week is going. 
I have no idea what to do. My kid is in the desert with no phone service. I may have to make decisions without him.
Was he offered McCarthy Honors dorm?
I’ll reread everything and see.
Does anyone know if there is a certain dorm where the B Arch (5-year architecture) freshmen tend to live? Or are they all scattered?
Then which decisions do you need to make without him? Is there still a housing deadline of this Wednesday for all students? That seems awfully soon.
You won’t be able to sign him up for housing without his email. They sent an ID in the email to my daughter. I think the housing is first come/first serve, so it’s not the end of the world to not sign up right away, but he likely won’t get his first choices if he feels strongly towards one of the dorms.
This is the first line of the email:
The USC Housing application will open Wednesday, March 29th at 9AM PDT**.** Admitted students are eligible to apply, even if you have not committed to attend USC.
Oof. I would definitely try to get the housing app in early. Parents should consider doing it for their kids, if their kids care which dorm they get and will be in (high school) class at the time registration opens. As I recall, the “desirable” dorms tend to go very quickly and it can take several attempts at registering for housing because the app gets flooded as soon as it opens. At least, that was true several years ago.
This all seems kind of unnecessary, especially since they haven’t had the admitted students visit yet. I wonder if it means that kids just end up scattered everywhere like any other school.
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It does – but some dorms are pretty far from everything. Kids offered McCarthy tend to like living there. Kids who want Greek life tend to want to live at New North; kids who like the “open door” policy of Birnkrandt tend to want to live there. It just depends on how important any of this is to your particular student.
What about my kid who wishes they had the open door policy at McCarthy?? 
Luckily she is on spring break so she’ll have her top 5 picked out and ready to go on Wednesday, but she switches between McCarthy and Birnkrandt every time we have the conversation…
I will be doing this, since my kid is out of range of any wifi. I have his login, because he wants me to do it (no breach of privacy). I don’t know how to choose what to go for, but I’ll do my best. Let me know if you have any advice!
I sent you a DM
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Re: housing application, iirc, the key thing is to get your time stamp as early as possible so that you get priority in the actual dorm assignment process later.
The order of preference can be changed later without affecting your time stamp.
Also you don’t need to commit to USC yet to submit the housing app. Only need to pay a small housing app fee to secure the priority.
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That’s so great to hear! We did not know that you could change later. We are definitely going down for the April 7 Explore USC which won’t do housing tour, but maybe talking to students will help her make up her mind.
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does anyone know if you can switch major easily in USC? D was considering switching from math to CS. how feasible is that?
When the time comes, I believe the more experienced parents here will definitely share more information on the dorms.
(Link removed as it may contain outdated info - will repost)