<p>Those are good points, Madbean. My guess is that the target class size is about 3000, and that there was a lower level of attrition over the Summer than usual. That makes sense from a psychological standpoint – the kids bumped up from Spring may have valued their Fall admissions more as a group than they otherwise would have, and may have been less inclined to accept admission offers from other wait lists. After all, we often value things more that are harder to attain.</p>
<p>One additional thing that is interesting from the numbers: USC has been accused by some churlish folks, at least on these boards, of artificially inflating its admission statistics by having so many Spring Admits. The implication of the accusers has been that the Spring admits must have substantially lower stats than the Fall admits, and that if they were included in the Fall admission numbers, USC’s stats would drop significantly. </p>
<p>But if we are correct that an usually high number of Spring Admits were bumped to Fall this year – and the data certainly suggest that this was the case – then this year’s Freshman Profile seems to suggest that the Spring Admits have stats on par with the Fall Admits. Both the admitted and enrolled stats are almost identical to last years’, but if the Spring Admits had had significantly lower stats, I think that there would have been a bigger gap between the admitted and enrolled stats this year. At the very least, this years’ data shows that the inclusion of a very large number of Spring Admits into the total accepted and enrolled student pool did not result in a material change from the accepted and enrolled students’ stats from last year. I think this suggests that the Spring Admit stats are similar to the Fall Admits (or at least in the mid-75%).</p>
<p>This seems to contradict the claim by some that USC has somehow gamed the US News rankings through the use of Spring Admits. </p>
<p>Thoughts? Does this logic make sense? (By the way, I don’t really care very much about stats at all; I just like playing with numbers. What impresses me most about USC is the vibrancy of the student body and the incredibly talented students in the arts and other fields that don’t lend themselves to quantifiable measures).</p>