My kid is still waiting on some reaches, but the USC situation (some merit, not the amount desired) has made the college application season longer and still very much up in the air.
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My personal opinion is that all universities care about yield. Do they practice yield protection? I have no clue.
Every year, USC publishes a first year student profile. The past several years, the public high school with the largest number of students in USC’s entering class has been Foshay Learning Center in Los Angeles. According to US News, Foshay is 84% Hispanic, 15 % Black, 0.8% White, 0.3% Asian. 90% are on a free lunch program.
The HS with the second largest number of students is Orange County HS for the Arts in Santa Ana. In their school profile, they state that 80% of their students enroll in a four year college. Last year, 17 of their students enrolled at USC. 85 enrolled at a UC, with 21 at UCLA and 23 at UCI.
If you are interested, you can work your way though the demographics of the other schools that USC lists on their first year student profile
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USC is a Questbridge partner; those public schools would be expected since likely those students placed USC as their top choice.
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I would discourage USC in this situation, hopefully your kid also has some good lower cost options. No school is worth taking on a heavy debt load.
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I don’t doubt it. But I don’t believe all of the Foshay students are Questbridge. USC does significant outreach to Foshay as part of their Neighborhood Academic Initiative.
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Interesting to look at.
USC had 80,808 applicants last year.
Ultimately, there were 3,633 new first-year students enrolled last year.
Of those, 766 earned some type of merit scholarship.
The other 2,867 had need-based aid or were full pay.
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UCLA’s 4/6 year graduation rates were 84%/92% for those who entered in fall 2016, while USC’s 4/6 year graduation rates were 79%/92% for the same cohort.
https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?q=ucla&s=all&id=110662#retgrad
https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?q=usc&s=all&id=123961#retgrad
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USC claims not to consider level of applicant’s interest in admissions, according to section C7 of their common data set at https://oir.usc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/CDS_2022-2023_FINAL_08102023.pdf .
Presumably, like most colleges, they try to predict yield of each individual applicant and admit. Whether or not that matters in making the admission decision is not known to the general public. If they do practice yield protection and their CDS is accurate, that means that individual applicants’ expressions of interest do not affect their decisions in this aspect.
USC has a large progressive degree program where students can complete their bachelors and masters in 5 years. Do you know if that impacts the published grad rates?
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SC isn’t nearly as generous with some of their grad or professional schools. There’s been a lot of press about how much they owe upon graduation and how the pay prospects for some schools aren’t enough to repay the debt and students were under the misguided impression that they would earn more. The School of Social Welfare in particular has been subject to a lot of scrutiny and I think the former dean is going to jail in connection with some public corruption (not related to student debt but something else). There’s been other articles that have been pretty critical of grad school debt accumulated at private universities and NYU, Columbia and SC have come under intense criticism. The majority of student loans in the US are accumulated at the graduate or professional level; not from undergraduates.
More Foshay students are admitted to USC than from other high schools due to the Neighborhood Academic Initiative Program that takes 7 years for students to complete. Students who are admitted to USC as part of the program receive full tuition. It’s part of the school’s community outreach partnership with LAUSD.
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I read they are at 30% international for UG, which I’m sure has an influence on pricing.
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College Navigator - University of Southern California says 14% US nonresident.
It also says that 18% were living in foreign countries, but that can include US citizens living outside the US.
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The price is appalling, but as others have said USC has a lot of company in this regard. What truly sets USC apart for “donut hole” families is that it is one of the only private schools in the top 25-30 that offers a significant number of merit scholarships. And it is one of the very few that has merit scholarships tied to NMF designation as well as scholarships that are more discretionary (Trustee, Non-NMF Presidential, Deans). Two of my three kids went to USC on the NMF scholarship. If that had not existed, one would have likely taken the NMF scholarship to Fordham and the other a scholarship to UGA. USC is a significant upgrade over those very good schools, especially in their majors. One even got a half tuition scholarship to USC-Marshall for her grad degree. The vast majority of my peers where I live send their kids to local state schools, which is perfectly fine and they do great. But I am very grateful to USC for providing an option few schools can match.
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Waiting on these reaches, too. Ahhh!
I was curious about that, too.
I will say my kid goes to a private school that is upper middle class for the lost part and kids from there rarely get in to usc despite acceptances at similar private colleges
Why do you think that is?
A couple of years ago, my son’s USC costs, including housing, etc., were very expensive at about 75K to 85K per year. Even though after his freshman year, which he transferred from a UC to USC, 3 years of USC costs were still very expensive, especially with no scholarship. Despite having a stellar GPA (no college grade lower than an A minus, finishing at USC with Summa Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa honors), he applied for scholarships at USC and was not offered any. I was fortunate to have the means to pay full price at USC. He is now attending Northwestern University’s Pritzker Law School in Chicago, which is significant more expensive than at USC. Northwestern University’s undergraduate tuition is about the same as USC’s for the 23-24 school year. If the costs work out for you, it can be well worth it. My son is now on track for a very lucrative law career.
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i still think USC is giving high amount of financial aid. most people i know attending are not paying the full cost of tuition and never have. i feel like this stereotype takes away a little bit from the efforts these kids are putting in to get accepted. imagine working hard to get into a T20 - T30 just to be called spoiled 
it is not that much different from the cost of attending an ivy league. but obviously, the cost of tuition is very high and there are certainly students paying all of it that are truly spoiled