Admissions Report Shows Drop in Acceptance Rate
USC's freshman admit rate has dropped by more than four percentage points this year to an all-time low of 18 percent.
Last year, USC received 38,000 applications and offered acceptance letters to 8,450 students. The number of applicants has risen by 20 percent this year to 45,400, the greatest number in the school’s history. Of the 45,400 applicants that the school received this year, only 8,400 were accepted.
Of the 8,400 students, 1,000 were offered spring admittance.
USC President C. L. Max Nikias shared his feelings of excitement towards the new statistics as an indication of the strength of USC’s students in his annual address to USC’s faculty.
“This intense interest in USC allows us to build the most broadly talented undergraduate population in the world,” Nikias said.
According to the address, USC’s current freshman class contains nearly three times as many Caltech-caliber students as Caltech itself. “Caltech has approximately 200 students with almost perfect GPAs and SAT scores, while USC has 550 of exactly the same quality”.
The address also included that the freshman class comprises more top students in the creative and performing arts than at the world’s leading conservatories and professional schools.With this greatly successful pool of current first-year students, it is not surprising that the quality of USC’s incoming students is improving every year.
"I would say that the university is becoming more competitive and accepting the best of the best," said freshman Jessica Hernaiz. "I think the perception of USC is changing."
The group of accepted students for this year is also extremely diverse. Fourteen percent represent the first generation in their family to be able to attend college, twenty-one percent are underrepresented minorities, and fifteen percent are international students.
Nikias believes that these successes are partly due to a “proactive and aggressive approach to high school recruiting” by USC representatives. Today, representatives from USC reportedly visit more than 2,000 high schools per year.
“I hope that it means the school is getting a lot of really smart and driven kids," USC freshman Meagan Nelford said. "I just hope that qualified students don’t get scared off from applying because they are intimidated by the statistic.”
Admittance letters were sent out on March 28th. Accepted students will have until May 1st to choose whether or not to accept admission to USC.
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