<p>Your stats are great, so you’ll get accepted into a good university. Which college are you applying to: Viterbi, Dornsife, Marshall, Annenberg, etc? </p>
<p>When I applied a few years ago, I did not write a good essay, but with great recs, ECs, grades, and decently good test scores, I was accepted into USC. Now, I’m a senior at USC. At that time, USC was my first choice among schools that accepted me, which included UCLA and Cal (not including schools that waitlisted me like Stanford and Brown). I think USC could take interest into account considering that your regional counselor will read your application, but interest is not the main factor for admission because as the last poster stated, the application review is hollistic. If you did apply to liberal arts colleges, some of them will place quite a bit of weight on interest.</p>