In a private group I’m in on Facebook, someone mentioned that those notifications would come out today. I have no idea if that is accurate.
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My personal feeling is probably not.
If my calculation above is not too far off, we can use the same logic to examine such hypothesis:
If USC only look at the RD applicants for the RD round, then the acceptance rate in RD would be 5,500 offers to be released in RD/ 40,400 RD applicants ~=13.6%
Personally I don’t think this would happen. Given the self-selective nature of the EA applicants, the EA pool usually demonstrates strong credentials and/or affinity with USC (likely even stronger than the RD pool, on average). It would not be fair if such a strong pool will actually have a lower acceptance rate than the RD applicants.
Yes, it is possible that USC may not re-evaluate all 38,200 profiles deferred, from a practical standpoint, because they may have their “funnel” applied already. However I think it’s not difficult for them to seriously take 10K or 15K (don’t know exactly how many) EA-deferred strong candidates into RD and compare these with the RD candidates. Of course this is purely my speculation, but at least that’s how I’d do it if I were in the admissions role.
So hang in there, all the talented and hard-working students that were deferred yesterday. I wish you all the best.
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@CADREAMIN : Do you know of any accepted USC parent groups on Facebook or others?
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My kid (and several other classmates) were deferred yesterday - given the app numbers no surprise. He said he filled out the form to indicate he still wishes to be considered for the RD batch.
But last night we spoke with a kid from school that we’ve know for years that was accepted, and I couldn’t be happier for them!!! So now my fingers and toes are crossed that the classmate will be considered for scholarships.
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My son was deferred and the letter says do not send LOCI or any other updates. I think sending an email to them with any updates will be frowned upon too.
My son really has some updates he could have put in had he applied RD. 
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What is the acceptance rate for Viterbi Chemical Engineering?
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Same my son has some new awards and honors that came in after ea deadline but they seem adamant about not wanting us to send anything so we won’t risk it. Just have to wait and hope for the best.
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Omar_Sanchez, congrats. There are only 2 viterbi accepts in this thread. Quite rare indeed. Are you computer science major by any chance ? If yes, can you share your stats ? Appreciate the data.
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You are good and not missing anything, it’s great to apply EA, and not a disadvantage. It’s two shots. Now if applying EA is “making” someone submit a subpar application with rushed essays or it’s an app that could be bolstered with strong mid term grades posted, it could be better to wait.
Agree with @Franziskaner that there are some apps that will be left behind, but those that should move on will.
It wouldn’t be the admit season without some angst, regret and torture.
Congratulations!! Can you share the stats?
Congratulations to all who were admitted to USC EA yesterday!!! And good luck with the merit announcements to come in February.
Clearly, any highly competitive process that includes just a 5.9% acceptance rate is daunting. Those who successfully navigated through that selection process and gained an offer of admission are to be commended.
But there is also no escaping that such a process is a very cruel numbers game for most. It also means that 94.1% of all applicants participating in the EA round saw their final decision deferred to March. I know that any such deferment is disappointing. Both of my daughters were very disappointed by the January results when they applied too.
This process is also very taxing and difficult for the admissions staff at USC themselves. They are balancing a # of factors and points of comparison while trying to craft a diverse and well-rounded freshman class. From their perspective, they are not really passing on or rejecting applicants. Instead, they are selecting a very limited # of applicants to further that goal. They are limited by the reality that they can only target a freshman class of circa 3K enrollees. USC’s projected yield rate also means that they can only admit roughly 7900 by April 1st. No college or university relishes in disappointing 90.2 percent of their applicant pool. And I know that the admissions staff at USC takes their role very seriously. And toward the goal of realizing a targeted core group of 3K or so eventual enrollees, they are also forced to factor in a # of considerations that may be outside the control of each individual applicant… like FirstGen status, legacy considerations, ethnicity, state or country of residence, etc. It is a lot to balance. But it also means that any individual applicant’s deferment or even eventual failure to gain admission cannot simply be broken down to a simple formula for comparison.
The vast majority of students attending USC now… and the vast majority of USC alums worldwide… were admitted in March and not January. 5500 or so more applicants will be receiving offers of admission before April 1st, likely during the last week or so of March. So, keep the faith and remain hopeful. 
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There is one official USC Parent Facebook group. It is administered by USC Parents of Troy. There are also USC administered groups for admitted students. Your student should be able to find those links on their portal.
Be cautious about joining any FB Group administered by 3rd party companies looking to grab your personal information. These companies have names such as College Admits, Humans of University, etc.
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Thank you @lkg4answers
It is true that the huge applicant numbers put enormous pressure on Admissions Committees who are just trying to balance institutional goals with crafting the best class. But universities bring on these crazy numbers by denying that they have certain cutoffs and encouraging so many applicants in a quest for low admit rates. The guise is “holistic admissions”. The process would be much improved if schools were more transparent.
This is true of the USC EA process: if every EA application already got a review, USC already knows that a large portion has no chance of admission in March. Why not make that decision now?
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Meant to reply to the whole thread-- not privatems!
I think the whole “no reject” thing is ridiculous, it simply gives people a lot of false hope and no direction on where to go.
Every single applicant in my private boarding school got deferred, including two double legacy kids with perfect stats, excellent extracurriculars, essays, and LORs, whose parents have donated unimaginable amounts to the school in the past. And it’s not yield protection either (although i don’t think usc yield protected), because these students also made it clear that they would attend USC if they got in to the ao, and that it was their first choice (which is true).
In the past usc has let in at least 4 kids a year from our school, so this was shocking to everyone. I think the ea process was insane, and that in the future they should absolutely consider rejection as part of it (for everyone’s sake).
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totally agree. Yale and Princeton have moved to rejecting vast majority of their SCEA applicants instead of the old “gentleman’s deferral” as it used to be called. I actually find the outright reject to be much cleaner and better. Harvard is still doing the deferral thing for most SCEAs.
Now re: USC - they are experimenting in EA this year and I sense part of this was just done to reduce reading load on the admissions office by moving the reading for half the applications into a new 2 month period.
Accordingly, I also dont believe that they will actually re-read the vast vast majority of the 38k deferred yesterday. I’m guessing 10-20% will get a second look. The other 80 percent should have been rejected.
By not rejecting those 80%, USC is buying themselves a free option but a free option they won’t actually use in practice.
It’s marginally good for USC option value to not reject any EAs but it’s actually bad for the vast majority of those 38k kids to believe they have a chance and not actually have a chance. If you haven’t read Jeff Selingo’s book on admissions, you should. he embedded in 4 admission offices before the pandemic. And what he saw was very clearly that every single policy most schools do helps the university and comes at the detriment of the kids. This starts with ED and continues with this bogus deferral game and of course we know how many goose their stats to play the USnews rankings game.
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I agree with all of these points. I think those who spend so much time crafting their applications and hoping to shine through should also realize the reality of screening these massive applicant pools. My family happened to meet a “USC seasonal application reader” a few months back. She is 22 years old and making about 25$ an hour to read about 50 applications a day. Likely this is just the first pass and I’ll give USC the benefit of the doubt that every application that passes the prescreen gets a thorough read…
But, I agree that only a small portion of those deferred will get another look.
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How are they making sure these readers know what to look for- scary that someone who is inexperienced in admissions is the first pre-screener?
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This sounds bad but… I don’t think they do really care. Sure, they’ll make sure they’re decently qualified, but I’m not sure they’re going to give training to “seasonal readers”.
At the end of the day, colleges are businesses and systematic institutions. As holistic as they try to make it seem, there’s no way they’re giving every single one of the 81,000 applicants a fair read, yk.
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