Hey guys, I was just wondering how the statistics of Viterbi compare to USC’s overall statistics. For example, does anyone know the average GPA and test scores of an accepted Viterbi applicant? I understand there is a page containing a bunch of statistics, although I believe that is for USC as a whole. Because Viterbi is an engineering school, I believe the statistics will differ although my past emails have been ignored by USC for some reason and I’d prefer to not spam them…Thanks and sorry for anything that’s confusing. Wanted to quickly post this before I went to bed in hopes of having my question answered in the morning!
Also, this is all under the assumption that USC and different schools within it such as Dornsife, Viterbi, etc. all have different acceptance rates. I know some schools such as Harvard do not consider your selected major and will allow you to major in anything as long as you are accepted to the school as a whole. I assume this is not the case at USC, where (like the majority of other schools), you must apply to a specific major.
They do not post statistics per school, although at an admission presentation a couple years back, they said it is about 10%. I can safely say the admission rate for Viterbi will be much lower than overall rate. SCA is at 4%, I believe the lowest acceptance rate of the USC schools. GPA requirements will certainly be at the high end, there are plenty of 4.0uw and 4.5w kids that don’t get accepted. It’s a great program I have a senior in CS there.
There’s no way that Viterbi’s admissions rate is only 10%. If you do some math, you will understand why. They get about 425 new kids every year and something like 25% accepting their admission offer. That would mean that they probably make around 1700 admission offers. With a 10% admission rate, they’d have to get around 17,000 applications. I know that this year they got 10 or 11k. So, at the lowest, I’d say their rate is 15%. Not too far from the overall rate of 16 or 17%.
Thanks for the responses, guys. I have heard many different answers although I am glad you shed some light with statistics, s0meUSCkid95. I expected it to be similar to the overall acceptance rate and not too far off but I wasn’t sure. My teachers tell me I have a good chance of being admitted but I got really scared after hearing some rumours about a 5-10% acceptance rate for engineering haha. Thanks again everyone!
"There’s no way that Viterbi’s admissions rate is only 10%. "
I dont know where you get this idea.
Given that Engineering is one of todays most desired majors [ for instance-40% of Stanford students are Engineering majors] , I dont see why it is unreasonable to assume that at least 30-35% of USC applicants might be applying to Vertibi, out of 50,000 total applications.
Actually guys, I just found statistics that stated approximately 410 spots were intended for Viterbi students in the recent class. Assuming the 33% yield rate applies, 1230 students were accepted into Viterbi out of 11,000 Viterbi applicants (statistic also from this site). Using this, I calculated the acceptance rate to be approximately 11%. Although this is closer to the 10% CADREAMIN estimated, the article states that this was the most competitive year. I assume in past years it has been closer to 15% but is slowly decreasing as time progresses. Regardless, thanks for the help everyone!
@menloparkmom : “I don’t know where you get this idea.”
Well, I get the idea from checking the facts. The office I work in receives regular internal admissions reports.
This year, Viterbi received 10,564 freshman applications (only about 20% of the whole USC pool). 1,544 were admitted. That is a 14.62% admissions rate. USC’s overall rate this year was 16.6%. So yes, engineering is a little more selective than the overall rate, but still nowhere near as selective as the film school (8.5%).
I had no statistics, just what we were told by the AD in engineering, which was between 10-11%, which I rounded to 10%. Not scientific, but seemed reasonable. It was great you found some numbers and an article about it. Keep in mind they are holistic, so it’s just not the gpa and test scores, although they help…good luck, don’t sweat the stats, just put together a great application. And don’t make any single school your one and only dream school. Have back ups that you love and the process will go great!
@s0meUSCkid95 You mentioned that SCA’s acceptance rate is 8.5%. Are there more detailed #s related to this? Various posts here on CC have suggested an admit rate varying from 4-7%, depending on the major. We have heard that writing and production are the hardest to get into. 8.5% would be the highest we have heard thus far for SCA. I ask because my D2 is a current SCA applicant this cycle… first choice: production, second choice: cinema and media studies. There are 6 undergraduate SCA majors, so I guess that each could have a different admit rate.
@WWWard Sorry- I don’t have any access to major-by-major admissions data.The report that I have seen only shows info by school.I can confirm that USC’s cinema school had an 8.5% admission rate this year.I think that is pretty similar to what it has been in recent years. I am sure that different majors within each school probably have different admission rates.
Thanks, @s0meUSCkid95 8.5% is still a little higher than what we had heard. We had heard 4-7%, so the average seemed to be more like 5.5%. 8.5% is still incredibly competitive, but we will hope that the extra 3% makes a difference in her case… of that she can at least still get into USC overall and have a second shot at SCA in the future via an internal transfer.
Interesting SCA statistics. I also remember Dean Daley mentioning during Family Weekend events, for all four years that my son attended, that SCA had an acceptance rate of 4%, and she always mentioned that the rate was less than Harvard Med School.
@CCMThreeTimes Indeed. I have always heard the same. I would love to know the real raw #s for USC SCA. I still think that production and writing are around 4%, maybe even closer to 3% for writing. And if so, that means that some of the other 4 undergraduate majors would have to be above 10% then for the overall average to be 8.5%.
Those real #s have got to be out there somewhere Maybe I can find them someday…
