Hey guys, usually I’m pretty good at determining my chances at schools, but for USC I’m having a hard time. I’m having a hard time parsing 400+ pages in previous USC transfer threads. I’m curious if you guys think I’m competitive for USC – I just got rejected from UPenn and Cornell this year. I have never applied to USC.
I’m applying to USC because I’m simply not happy at Lehigh. Lehigh is too frat-oriented for my liking. Also, I’m gay and Lehigh’s LGBT life is pretty terrible despite rankings on various lists. Additionally, Lehigh has only one class pertaining to computer graphics (an intro class that is not even C++ based – it is javascript based). USC has many classes for computer graphics. Additionally, I want to live in SoCal after I graduate since it is warm, a great place to be gay, and a fun place to be if you’re into EDM.
Current college: Lehigh University (transferring for junior year status)
Cumulative GPA: ~3.88-ish for Computer Science and Mathematics
EC’s:
- Independent image analysis research with a professor (paper in progress) and another research project with the same professor
- started computer graphics club at Lehigh
- sailing during summers (Lehigh doesn’t have a team) (many awards; attempting to go to sailing world champions next year)
- applying to Barry Goldwater scholarship from Lehigh
- cool 3d art portfolio (here is one piece: imgur (dot) com/DHGs72w) and applying to Pixar internship (probs not gonna get it tho)
- various local programming competition awards
- and I do some music production and DJ when I’m bored
high school stats (do these even matter?):
GPA: ~3.7-ish UW, ~3.9-ish W (took all AP STEM classes)
ACT: 34, superscored
SAT Subject Tests: 790 Chemistry, 780 Math 2
AP Exams: mostly 5’s, some 4’s
EC’s: Research at Stevens Institute of Technology, various graphics design stuff, various state chemistry and math olympiad awards, and some stuff I cannot remember