<p>We had assumed that USC was a reach, I don't see many posts here about them, so perhaps they aren't as selective as we thought?</p>
<p>My son is a senior and here are some of his stats:</p>
<p>GPA 3.4 unweighted 3.6 weighted
1 AP course as a junior (4 on AP Calc test if that matters)
4 AP courses this year
National Merit Commended
SAT: 710 M 720 V 690 W
Tennis - 4 years
Cello / orchestra - forever
other ECs / summer jobs / etc.</p>
<p>He wants to go into game development (programming) and has been looking at RPI / RIT / Drexel / GA Tech, etc for Computer Science, (it appears that CMU and Cornell would not admit him). USC seems to have a terrific program. Does anyone know how difficult this is to get into?</p>
<p>Game development? That's cool. I think your son will be able to get into USC, as long as that isn't an impacted major. USC is very selective but a 1430 and well...GPA may hurt, but he definitely should apply.</p>
<p>Yeah, I would think that he has a good shot at USC. It is more selective than people think it is, but your son seems to be in the right range of possibility. Just have him do as good a job on the application as possible, and hope for the best.</p>
<p>USC is very selective, give me a break. If you are not in the state of california, its near a joke. I know a bunch from my school who couldn't even get into michigan out of state or nyu.</p>
<p>Right, with a 27% admit rate, avg 4.0 gpa and 1370 SAT (all far more impressive than NYU's stats I might add) they just let anyone with a pulse in, don't they?</p>
<p>Regarding your post apple, unfortunately, since the program is quite unique, it's also quite impacted. Also, it's through the Viterbi School of Engineering whose stats are, outside of Cinema-TV, probably the most impressive in the school. However, USC does tend to place more emphasis on SAT -- which your son has done pretty well on -- so it might offset the GPA difference. Taking all this into consideration, I'd be hesitant to call him a match (again, this program is hard to get into) but I would encourage him to apply.</p>
<p>The gpa for the admits for 2005-2006 is 3.8 and 3.7 for matriculants. The SAT scores for admits is 1300-1460 for the middle 50% and 1290-1430 for matriculants.</p>
<p>Thanks for all the great info. Sounds like it's a reach but he could apply. The program seems to really be what he wants. He's also talking about at least going there this summer for a summer program that they offer on game development. Does that make any difference to them?</p>
<p>Generally USC loves to be loved so going to a USC summer program would be helpful for admission to the University, but I don't know what it would mean for admission into a new, and, assumedly, highly competitive program.</p>