I know in prior years, USC has offered spring admission when they sent out RD acceptances. Will they do that with EA, or is this just for fall 2023?
I would assume spring admits would be done during regular admission in March when they have better idea of their numbers after EA. But just a guess.
@CADREAMIN Do you think the addition of EA this year was meant to drive overall applications up, so they could the deny more in the spring? In other words, is USC looking to be a Duke or Vanderbilt, where overall admit rate is about 7%?
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does anyone know if decisions are for sure coming out this week?
I didn’t consider that, hmmm…just thought it was just a way to get more students knowing they were admitted and mentally committed to USC earlier. Unless a school is just an absolute “dream school” - one that would always trump any other admission - I believe there is an emotional investment that starts happening once a student gets accepted - the sweatshirt, the googling, the learning about housing and the area, etc. In that sense, other schools that have EA/ED always have a leg up, because they get in the applicants head space first, so this makes USC more competitive with them. Also gives them an extra month to process a majority of applications which may make predicting numbers and shaping the class easier in March. Just random thoughts…
They always got high 30s to 41k applying by Dec 1 merit decisions and we hear around 45k applied this year by Nov 1, not a huge difference overall imo. I’ve feel like USC is pretty happy with the overall admit rate drop in the last 10 years, while 12-13% in general, some of it’s programs are much lower like engineering and the music/arts/performance/cinematic based majors, etc. I personally don’t think it’s a goal to get those 7% figures, but maybe that’s their #1 prioirity! idk. Others may have their take…interesting question.
Yes, admissions posted it was the 20th. That’s a lock.
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Did we always have “Mid-year transcript” as an item in the upload material drop-down on the portal for EA applicants or was it added recently now that we are into Jan? Does anyone know? Our school semester ends only in late Jan, so reports are not available till the first week of Feb.
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EA Admit rate may be around 4-5%.
Do not know. It is one of the items in the drop-down list on the portal. I think our school will send this report next week.
Yes mid year transcript has always been there.
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Send when available, they know dif schoools have varying schedules. If they have them early they could be used as a factor, although they prioritize 9-11 grades. No penalty if they come later and they are definitely used to validate acceptable grades were achieved for senior year (basically to confirm admission).
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Reading all of the information on this thread raises a question in my mind: How does a school process 45,000 applications in less than 3 months? Even with the common app that’s 92,000 essays! USC seems to pride itself on looking at the “whole student” but is very restrictive as to what you can submit. Also, there’s no interview…
Is there just a basic “first culling” based on GPA or some other factor? The staggering amount of applications suggests it’s not possible to give everyone a fair shake…All insights appreciated!
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What did you feel that you wanted to submit that you were not able to?
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I was thinking about how they are going to handle this transition year too since before this round was mostly for merit scholarship. They get like 60% of applications in the early round, so if they are treating this as regular ea as other schools, they might admit say at least 40% of the total offerings in the early round, if not higher, since early round is considered for merit so the pool should be at least comparable to the regular pool. But they were planning on admit 20-25, so most likely they pick those they want to commit in the early round. I wouldn’t be surprised if they use some thresholds to pick early round admits a little bit quicker like gpa or sat. Since they only defer, so that would still be ok since for the deferrals they can have more time to review later.
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My D has done very unique volunteer work that you just can’t explain in 1 sentence on the common app, so she put together a brief video. They wouldn’t accept it. They also don’t accept outside recommendations (non-teacher) on the common app. I will say that the admission counselor DID write her back, which is rare for most school interactions.
Have people been able to interview? She has had no success in setting one up.
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She could have provided more explanation in the additional info section on her volunteering work.
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Doing the math on my end, 45K applications divided amongst the 45 USC admissions counselors is approximately 1000 applications/counselor. If they worked 75 days during those three months, that comes out to approximately 15 applications/day.
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My son also has a very unusual volunteer EC (some reading this may roll their eyes at this but yes, it is very unusual. 
). I agree that it is too bad they don’t accept additional non-teacher recommendation letters, as he did have a letter related to this EC that he submitted to other schools.
I know this won’t help your daughter’s situation so I am sharing this more for the benefit of someone else who may find themselves in a similar situation in the future. But he handled this in his USC application by doing three things: (1) In addition to noting it in the activities section in the Common App, he used the Dornsife essay to discuss his EC because it fit the question and because it’s something he feels passionately about. He spends a lot of time on this EC and he didn’t feel his application would be complete without elaborating on it and the Dornsife essay was a perfect spot to do: Many of us have at least one issue or passion that we care deeply about – a topic on which we would love to share our opinions and insights in hopes of sparking intense interest and continued conversation. If you had ten minutes and the attention of a million people, what would your talk be about? (2) he mentioned a little about how he might bring his interest in this EC to USC in his Why USC? essay since it tied in with a specific program USC has, but this would be a new twist on it; and (3) after submitting his EA application (mid-October), he learned in December that he received a Presidential Volunteer Award related to this specific EC. So just before the holidays he emailed a brief update to the regional admissions’ officer for our state to let them know that this was something new since his application had been submitted and he used it as an opportunity to reiterate his strong interest in USC. I also agree with the other post that mentioned that you can use the additional information section of the Common Application to provide a bit more elaboration if necessary.
If there is something that is so central to understanding who a student is as an applicant and it can’t be addressed in the main Common App essay or activities section, look for other ways to authentically communicate it.
Again, I know hindsight is 20-20. I am just sharing this in case it helps others. Good luck to everyone.
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I’m trying to set expectations very low for my D23 for Friday as deferral seems the most likely result. I wish they were accepting a larger percentage of the class early.
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I’m mentally expecting it to go either way, and I think a lot of people will end up getting deferred, it seems.
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