<p>in the way students are notified of the “status” of their application. See below.</p>
<p>Thanks so much for your email and for your observations and suggestions about the USC Online Status Check. I have forwarded your suggestions to our technical team for review. Given where we are in the admission cycle for the 2010 class, I do not expect we will be able to implement any changes for this year. However, I have requested a thorough review of the site so that we can make appropriate changes next year to simplify and clarify the messages students and families can access online.</p>
<p>Best regards,</p>
<p>Katharine Harrington</p>
<p>L. Katharine Harrington</p>
<p>Dean of Admission and Financial Aid</p>
<p>this is the email I sent </p>
<p>Dear Katherine,</p>
<p>I thought that you should be aware of the confusion and angst that has been showing up on the USC forum of College Confidential, because of the current system where any and all changes in the “status” of applications are reported as they move through the decision process.This reporting includes the use of opaque, indecipherable phrases that many students [and some parents] are trying to decipher and interpret. Students and parents do not know how what the following words mean, or what the difference is between an application that is “under review” or “preliminary” or “forwarded”. Do these changes in the status of an application even need to be posted? Because as best as I can tell, they aren’t understood nor seem to be of any benefit to the applicant. This a case where attempting to being more transparent [ if that is the reason for posting these status changes, whatever they actually do mean] does not seem to helpful, at least to students hoping for a thick envelope from USC. There also seems to be no rhyme or reason for some status changes, since they often don’t seem to correlate to letters students have or have not received regarding acceptances, or scholarships or not being under consideration for a scholarship, or the need for grades to be submitted, etc, etc. If you take a look at tthreads from College Confidential USC forum, you will see many postings on many threads asking" what does this change in my status actually mean?"</p>
<p>In summary, may I suggest that USC adopt a simpler online notification system for applications that alerts students only when
1] any parts of an application are missing
2] when their mid term grades have been received [ if they are required]
3] when their application is complete
4] when a decision has been reached
5] what the decision is.</p>
<p>This is all the information most top private colleges give out [ my son applied to many other colleges, and no other admissions notification systems were as confusing as USC’s currently is] and I think the above information is all that most students or parents need to be told [ or want to know]!</p>
<p>menloparkmom, thank you for taking the time to bring this matter to the Dean’s attention. Your proposal for a simplified notification system makes perfect sense. Hopefully they’ll embrace and implement it in not too distant future.</p>
<p>While I agree that messages seem to be sent randomly, leading to confusion, it seems that the messages themselves are pretty clear-
preliminary review means they are making sure they have everything they need,
We need more information, means just that. We have all the info we need, means that.
App has been sent to committee for review means the admissions committee is reviewing the application.</p>
<p>I am afraid that anything that could be written will be dissected for deeper meaning like chicken innards in a Laotian religous rite, by students desperate for an answer.</p>
<p>I dont understand the critique of the current system.</p>
<p>Instead of trying to read in between the lines of trying to discover what a certain status means… why dont you just wait for the letter in the mail to arrive? It has the document status check… if everything is in, you have nothing to worry about.</p>
<p>@28thuniversity
If we should all just chill and wait for the letter in the mail (which I actually don’t disagree with), then why do we even need the status to constantly bounce from one message to another? The reality is that not everybody can take an already stressful process in stride, as evidenced by the sheer number of threads started on the subject of status updates, as well as by the tens of thousands (!!) of views they get.</p>
<p>@merryecho
I agree that each message, taken separately, seems to mean something logical. But we have had students on this forum reporting that after getting letters saying that their mid-year reports have been received have seen the online status change to say the opposite. Or status updates that went from “under review” to “forwarded” to “preliminary review” back to “under review” etc., etc. That’s bound to cause confusion, despite USC’s best intentions towards transparency or whatever it is that’s behind the current system’s design.</p>
<p>@threetreasurs
Lol, I don’t think that we’re in any danger of being forgotten :-)</p>
<p>I totally understand the stress that comes but the messages are quite simple and mean well what they mean.</p>
<p>If it says that the application is under review… then it is under review---- it does not mean you have a 4.53849 percent chance of aacceptance</p>
<p>If it says its been forwarded to the committee, then its been sent to the committee!</p>
<p>The updates come at different times because they cant process all 40 thousand applications at once! Jut like when you are roofing a house… it may take three days to shingle the entire house so one wing may be completed while one isnt…so its gonna take the roofers a day or two to get to the other wing of the house.</p>
<p>^^ I’ll just say again that it is the <em>succession</em> of messages and how they either contradict information received in regular letters and/or how they bounce back to stages that they’ve previously already been in that people tend to find confusing. No other college that my son has applied to and that has an online notification system even attempts to provide updates at more than 2 or 3 critical stages during the application process. Sometimes less is more. </p>
<p>And no, I don’t expect USC to communicate to us the likelihood of getting accepted down to five decimal places (where did that come from?) In fact, in all my previous posts–granted, not many–I did my best to encourage parents and students alike to try not to read too much into these updates.</p>
<p>merry and 28th - it isn’t a critique of *the system *because as you say - the messages are clear.</p>
<p>What menlo is trying to pass on to admissions is that the KIDS read far more in to those messages than they should, and it causes them stress. Other universities (that many of these same applicants have applied to) do not update the statuses after the application is complete, and the kids are not checking in minute-by-minute and agonizing over what each status might “mean.”</p>
<p>(And fyi, kids, the statuses mean your application is traveling through the admissions process - and all applications go through the process, both those that are ultimately accepted and those that are rejected.)</p>
<p>The simplified system would hopefully let them get off the computer and enjoy the last half-year of their high school career!</p>
<p>Alemom- I don’t agree that no messages at all is more helpful than the simple ones that go out now. D appreciated knowing that all of her info had been received, and forwarded for review. Of course these kids are so desperate for a crystal ball to tell them yes or no that they will read meaning into anything- but at least this gives them something to focus on. If there was no message they would be posting here about the meaning of that.</p>
<p>I don’t think they would - I’ll use the example of two forums I frequented when my daughter applied - UC Berkely and UCLA: Once the application is complete, there is no message on the website other than that the decision will be in late March. Everyone knows the decisions come out late March, and there is no discussion of the “status” at all - if your application is complete, that’s IT. I just checked over there, and there are no threads agonizing over what is going on with the applications. Over here, we have several on page one, and several more a few days/weeks back.</p>
<p>Actually, there is a wee bit of discussion going on with UC Berkeley (pales in comparison to the multiple threads on USC.) With Berkeley, posters are attempting to devine whether an invite to interview for a Regents scholarship is akin to a likely letter. (The answer is yes, according to a parent I know who had a senior last year.)</p>
<p>I think the status updates from USC would be helpful if they were:</p>
<p>1) We checked the mail and got your app.
2) Your app is now sitting on Tim’s desk.
3) Tim forgot to look at it, so Susan will.
4) Susan looked at, we got everything we need.
5) Susan’s going to lunch now and will drop your app off with the committee.
6) The committee will look at it at 3:45 this afternoon.
7) It’s now 5 pm, we still didn’t look at it.
8) Oh oh, someone misplaced it, oh wait, we found it.
9) Tim just called, he asked why didn’t he get your app back to look at.
10) Too bad for Tim, we made a decision.
11) Check you mail box on March 00 for a letter of our decision.</p>
<p>Hahaha. I agree with Alamemom…keep it simple.</p>
<p>Alamemom, do you remember for Berkeley 2 years ago when all of the students were parsing the meaning of the wording of the e-mails of when decisions would come out? It turns out that the wording had no correlation with whether or not you were accepted.
Yes, Pop, that was really funny.</p>