As best I can tell, USC has not detailed admission stats for the Class of 2027 by individual Schools within USC, but here are the overall stats / details:
By March 24, a record-high 80,790 applications had been received, and USC sent acceptance letters to 9,277 students, yielding a record low 9.9% fall admission rate.
Of those admitted, 23% will be the first in their family to attend college — the highest rate ever recorded at USC. Legacy students make up 12% of the admitted class.
A third of students identify with a historically underrepresented racial or ethnic group.
Californians make up 38% of the new class, followed by New York, Texas, Illinois, Washington and New Jersey as the most represented states. 19% are international students from 87 different countries.
3.9 was the average GPA for the class of 2027. 41% of students earned perfect grades in high school.
While most agree that USC Dornsife is slightly easier to gain admission to versus some of the more highly competitive Schools within USC, these #s above reflect how extremely difficult it is to gain admission to USC, regardless of the chosen major.
I’m getting an admissions rate of 11.5% (ie., 9,277 / 80,790) for the incoming class, no?
Also curious to know if USC publishes historic data on the % of the class that was from California. Back in the '90s and '00s, I would have guessed USC was more like 60-70% Californians, vs. the 38% cited for this year’s incoming class.
Is the percentage of “SCions” (not sure USC still uses that expression for legacy students) at 12% the lowest it’s ever been? That legacy percentile used to hover around 20%, even as recently as just several years ago.
The 9277 includes spring admits which are not calculated in any school’s overall acceptance rate. From the Daily Trojan:
This year, the University received 80,790 applications and accepted 8,032 of them for the Fall 2023 semester. An additional 1,245 applicants were accepted for Spring 2024 admission.
As others replied, it appears that the fall admit rate was 9.9%, but that the overall admit rate was higher when factoring in spring admits. I was citing an USC press release and not performing the number crunching myself.
You may want to review the USC freshman profile. It breaks down the numbers a variety of ways. But I do not recall historic data on the exact % of the class that was from California specifically. But yes… I believe that you are correct in that the # from California admitted or enrolled has declined over the years.
Yes… I believe that the legacy admit rate is at or near the lowest ever as a percentage.
Thanks @WWWard and @mom2023SF for pointing out that USC accepts students for both a Fall semester start and for a Spring semester start. So for the Class of 2027 applicant pool, USC accepted 9.94% for the Fall, and 1.54% for the Spring, for a total acceptance rate of 11.48%.
12% of “SCions” (legacy admits) in the accepted class will likely end up being more like 14% or so in the enrolled Class of 2027, as legacy admits are much more likely to yield than non-legacy admits.
By the way, kudos to USC Admissions for publishing this view of the incoming class every year. I wish more colleges published a view like this – it’s helpful for applicants (and their parents) to see the data laid out in this format. Between this and the Common Data Set, you can get a great sense for the high caliber applicant pool.
You’re welcome. Likely true… I have to assume that legacy admits have a higher yield conversion rate than the balance of the admitted pool… which has been circa 40-41% in recent cycles.
I don’t know if it is a factor but California public schools (UCs and Cal States) are test blind. My guess is that a lot of California students opt to not take standardized testing.