<p>LSA
3.2 UW GPA (gr. 10-11) upward trend. very challenging schedule. ~3.7 W
1300 / 2000 SAT (700 CR, 600 M, 700 W)
I go to a very competitive prep school in the NE. (bottom 10% at my school would be top 10% at public)
great recs
first generation
solid ECs (model un, editor of student newspaper, tennis, crew, golf, part time job, 250 hours of community service)</p>
<p>Also, could anyone tell me about the financial aid situation at USC? I heard aid went down a lot last year which resulted in many students having to drop out. My parents are upper middle class, and I would need about half tuition/board covered in order to attend. Do they expect students to take a lot out in student loans? </p>
<p>You and your parents will need to run an aid calculator - they are available at the FAFSA website, the College Board website or in the Financial Aid forum here on college confidential. “Upper middle class” is a very vague statement. Use the institutional methodology because USC also uses the CSS/Profile to determine need.</p>
<p>Your GPA and SAT’s are a bit on the lower end, but these could be balanced out with amazing EC’s. Also, with these chance threads, nobody can really say if you’re in or not - we have no access to your essays or recs. With top-tier schools, applications tend to be viewed more holistically so factors other than stats are extremely important as well. Just make sure you write the best essays you possibly can - ones that tell adcoms things your GPA and scores don’t show, such as passion, goals, personality, etc. Again, there are no guarantees but if you try your best there leaves no room for regret.</p>
<p>Oh, and the different schools at USC have differing acceptance rates…which school are you applying to?</p>
<p>Also, I’m an admitted, not a current student, but have asked several students at USC what they think about SC’s financial aid. They all seem to be very satisfied and have little complaints about their aid packages. I’m not sure where you heard that “many students were dropping out” but I’m pretty sure that isn’t true. I hope you don’t have USC and the UC’s confused in that regard…
And yes, “upper middle class” doesn’t tell us much, but I don’t think many of us could tell you how much aid you’re eligible for anyway. Try the calculator, as alamemom suggested.</p>
<p>A sort of advisory: Please do not make statements like “the bottom 10% at my school would be top 10% at public (sic)” school. That sort of attitude may translate to your application and that is NOT a good thing. (Truth be told there are good, great and poor public and private schools). To assume that your school’s education and your stats are so superior to other schools is perhaps (considering your scores) a reach.</p>
<p>Please note that USC looks at the total student which is a very good thing. Stats, ecs…well, everything counts.</p>
<p>ellebud, that’s just what our college counselors say. Colleges know my school and how competitive it is. (30% of this year’s graduating class were NMSQ)</p>
<p>blissfulting, thanks for your take on FA at USC. I’m definitely applying to LSA but I’m considering Marshall as well.</p>
<p>Here’s the thing: (and please understand that I don’t want to shoot you down. This is a reality check) Your college counselors are employed by your school correct? This is a private school where results are importent to keep the school in business. Results are importent for public schools as well.</p>
<p>Colleges know many schools. USC is very familiar with the public (Corona del Mar, Peninsula, Beverly Hills for example) and private (Harvard-Westlake, Brentwood, Oakwood) schools here in Los Angeles. These are feeder schools for USC. I don’t doubt that you school has had many success stories. That is endemic to the system. USC knows LOTS of schools and LOTS of students. Just cause the counselor tells you that you’re a lock without the envelope…not so much.</p>
<p>USC probably also knows that many private schools manipulate their stats in order to make themselves appear above and beyond the normal public school. Here is an example of that. </p>
<p>A private school lists their overall stats, comparing them to the overall stats of the local high school. Low and behold, the private school comes out looking like the school to attend. But…what they don’t tell you is that they are comparing the stats of all english speaking kids against the overall stats of a school that has non-english speaking, limited-english speaking kids that drag the test scores down and make the school look inferior. If you remove the non-english speaking and limited english from the equation, the public school actually has MUCH better scores than the private school. It happens all the time. </p>
<p>All private schools know how to do this and the majority of them play that game. You have to compare apples-to-apples and that is very rarely done. That is a private school dirty little trick.</p>
<p>I went to a private school until we figured that out and transferred to a public. Much better choice.</p>
<p>@tornados – you can’t ignore the fact, however, that some (not necessarily all) private high schools have a much more rigorous and demanding curriculum than most public schools, meaning an “A” at a public school is possibly easier to get then it is at a private school.</p>
<p>pfmichaels–I have to say that I don’t agree with you. I do not think private schools are any more rigorous that some of the local high schools, they only think they are. But you never know, there are good privates/publics and bad privates/publics, but I would take public any day over private.</p>
<p>ca87, did you do the financial aid calculators? While I agree with blissfulting that for students who qualify USC has excellent financial aid, it is likely that you do not qualify. What did you calculate your EFC to be?</p>
<p>
I am sure USC will be interested in those students.</p>
<p>Hmm I went to a public high school and the top 10% of my class went to schools like: Princeton, MIT, Yale, Cornell, Pomona, Harvey Mudd, Claremont McKenna, Haverford, USC, Tufts, Northwestern, WashU, Georgetown, Stanford, etc</p>
<p>If your bottom 10% regularly get into schools like that I’ll make sure to send my kids there in the future!</p>
