An Insider's Look at USC College Admissions - USC News
Interesting read from USC insider...
“We get an awful lot more applicants than most private universities,” Harrington says.
In 2016, that count passed 54,000.
Only 3,068 became Trojans.
BEYOND THE NUMBERS
In 1980, fewer than 10,000 high school seniors applied for admission to USC. Fast forward three decades, and the size of the applicant pool has more than quintupled.
Competition is fierce, and not just at USC. Experts note that the ease of applying to college electronically through the Common Application — as well as anxiety about getting into schools — means that typical high school seniors today apply to many more universities than their 1980s counterparts. ...
But the size of USC’s freshman class has remained about the same over this period. It still numbers between 2,700 and 3,000 in any given year. The chances of any one USC applicant being admitted has plummeted from 69 percent in 1980 to less than 17 percent in 2016.
So what makes for a successful application?
“Academic ability is the ante to get into the game,” says Harrington, who is also a professor of clinical management and organization at the USC Marshall School of Business. “It’s the first condition, but it doesn’t guarantee anything.”
Forget the myth that admission is all about the numbers. Says Timothy Brunold ’92, USC’s dean of admission: “This year, we turned away 3,000 people with 99th percentile test scores. We just don’t have enough room.”
ETA:
All the morning shows are expanding on the cheat story to include the limited annual admission, and resultant creativity among the competition.
