<p>Take USC for example. I checked the enrollment, & it was around 36,000 plus. Excluding the major athletes, I just don’t think EVERYONE there is a braniac with a GPA of 3.8 or higher, SAT score of something like 2400, AP courses every year in high school starting at the Junior level, hundreds of hours worth of EC’s, & being in multiple clubs. With that being said, they’d turn down every student that applies that has an application like: 3.5 GPA, didn’t really take AP’s but made solid grades, got involved in a few clubs, actually excelled in a sport but wasn’t a huge recruit, & accumulated decent EC hours? Would they really turn EVERY student with an application like that or something similar to that?</p>
<p>They’re one of the top 25 colleges. They definitely have some applicant who looks the same as your example applicant, except that she has a 3.6 GPA or took a few APs or whatever. Why would they want to accept your example applicant and reject her?</p>
<p>USC has 17,380 undergraduates. Divide by 4, and that’s only 4345 entering undergrads a year, and since it’s so highly ranked, I doubt USC is only getting US applicants. On the CollegeView site, it says that in one year (not sure which one), they received 35,794 applications and accepted only 8,715 students (2,972 of which actually enrolled), with an average GPA of 3.8, ACT of 31, and SAT of 2045. </p>
<p>With approximately 2.5 million high school graduates each year in the US alone, and estimating that only 2% of those students are at the caliber needed to get in, that’s 50,000 American students, enough students to fill most of the top 25 colleges. It’s also worth noting that in 2009, there were 76,177 students who scored above USC’s average on the SAT, though they may not have been domestic or had the GPA/ECs to get in (I needed to include that, because it took me forever to plug into my calculator. :p). If the top-tier colleges weren’t filled by those domestic applicants, international students would likely finish the job. </p>
<p>Given not all of the American students I cited will go to top-tier colleges, USC likely will need to accept slightly-lower ranked students like the one you proposed. However, the chances aren’t good at that point, as there’ll be far fewer spots left to fill, and there will still be applicants without the tippy-top grades or scores, but who have the ECs or APs necessary to boost their application. So in response to your question, no, they likely won’t turn away EVERY applicant like the one you proposed, but they will likely turn away the vast majority of them. The Top 25 are tops for a reason, if only because they attract the best of the best, and therefore don’t need to take on “average” (hardly average, really!) students.</p>
<p>…I really want to thank you for this topic - it was really fun doing the research! :)</p>
<p>Check the Common Data Set (google it) for each school you are looking at. You will see exactly which students were offered admission by class rank, test score and GPA. Section C is your friend.</p>
<p>sure, a bunch of average students do every year (read as: URMs)</p>
<p>Note that you will want to look primarily at numbers from this year to assess your chances. USC joined the Common App in the last admissions cycle, and doubled the number of undergraduate applications (from about 25 thousand to about 48 thousand applications, if I’m recalling correctly).
Remember that USC still does not have an early action or early decision process…I don’t know how they survived this past year in the admissions office!</p>
<p>The University of Southern California apparently does not publish a Common Data Set. According to USNWR, the average HS GPA for students entering in Fall 2010 was 3.7, with a 25th-75th percentile range of 3.5-3.9. The SAT 25th-75th percentile range was 620-720 for CR and 650-750 for Math. </p>
<p>So no, not every successful applicant has nearly-perfect grades and scores. However, the farther your stats are below those averages, the less likely you to be admitted (especially without some other compensating qualifications such as exceptional ECs).</p>
<p>Bumppppppp</p>
<p>If you are way below average, you don’t have to be an athlete to get in. But, you do have to have something distinguishing about you. Harvard mentioned they accepted an artist that was below average in grades. They made sure he could do the work before offering him a spot (he had some extenuating circumstances for the low grades).</p>
<p>What’s special about you that would give them incentive to admit you?</p>
<p>You have an entire other 6 page thread where the parents went over why this isn’t likely/possible. Let it go.</p>
<p>You really have to look at the info the school provides, right off the admissions website.
<a href=“http://www.usc.edu/admission/undergraduate/private/1213/USCFreshmanProfile2012.pdf[/url]”>http://www.usc.edu/admission/undergraduate/private/1213/USCFreshmanProfile2012.pdf</a></p>
<p>And then you have to understand what sorts of kids get in with less than a 3.8, what else in their picture makes them compelling applicants, what makes adcoms both want them there and confident they can make it in that college environment.</p>
<p>I think that you also have to consider if your average student writes a compelling admissions essay. USC has a certain kind of student and their ADCOM knows what they’re looking for.
LiveLaughLearn-that’s an unfair statement. Those of us who are URM have to have the same high standards that all schools accept.</p>
<p>Adcom’s primary concern at any selective school is whether an applicant has demonstrated the ability to succeed academically at that school. The next criteria is typically whether the individual applicant will have an impact on campus.</p>
<p>Generally, a high GPA/high test scores/rigorous curriculum will fill both of these criteria to a large extent. However, that does not mean that all admitted students will use these standards to gain admission. In fact, as tk21769 points out, 25% of USC’s freshmen (over 1,000 students) had GPAs of 3.5 or less.</p>
<p>aunt bea - statistics prove that URMs have lower standards than whites and Asians for gaining admission to selective schools . Adcoms have abandoned any pretense of equal standards.</p>
<p>sure you can get in with average stats. Is your last name Kennedy or is your dad a dictator of a repressive country?</p>
<p>Oh, dear, rmldad, I was with you til the end. The URM stats/rigor/accomplishments I see would knock one’s socks off.</p>
<p>The bottom quartile at any competitive college is often some athletes, faculty kids, some legacies, some outlier kids whose accomplishments are so great that they are worth a shot, etc.</p>