USC releases stats on admitted undergrads

While the acceptance rate for admitted undergraduate students increased, the university had more applicants, admitted more out-of-state and international students and remained fairly consistent in its acceptance of underrepresented applicants, according to statistics released by the university today.

This year, the admissions office accepted 9,304 of 47,279 applicants for a class size of 2,650 students.This is a 19.7 percent admission rate, which USC said is lower than last year’s final admission rate. Last year, USC reported that it admitted 18 percent (or about 8,265) of 45,917 applicants  for the same projected class size.

Though the acceptance rate seems to have gone up, other measures of admitted students’ academic achievements are the same. Admitted students for the 2013 and 2012 school years mostly come from the top 10 percent of their high school’s graduating class; for both, 75 percent have test scores at or above the 95th percentile. USC also reported the same average un-weighted high school GPA for this and last year’s accepted students: 3.82/4.0.

USC’s slow-but-steady increase of out-of-state students has not waned. About 45 percent of admitted students are in-state, compared to 47 percent last year. The current sophomore class was, in fall 2011, USC’s first-ever class to have less than half of its student hail from California, at 49 percent.

The number of admitted international students has increased by 4 percent from last year, rising to 17 percent. USC has opened international offices in India and China two years ago and an office in Brazil this year, and the admissions office has been gradually increasing efforts to reach more students worldwide, according to previous Daily Trojan articles.

While geographic diversity is increasing, racial diversity has remained nearly constant between this and last years’ admitted students statistics. The percentage of the admitted class that identified as Asian dropped from 30 percent to 26 percent and the number of the admitted class that identified as black increased from 6 percent to 7 percent. The percentage of admitted students that identified as Latino or Native American/Pacific Islander stayed the same, at 12 percent and 2 percent respectively.

The university reports that it has the most first-generation college students of any private university in the country. This year, 11 percent of admitted students would be the first in their family to attend college, compared to 12 percent last year. USC enrolls 3,398 first-generation students as of fall 2012, or 19 percent of all undergraduates.

The most-represented metropolitan areas in the U.S. outside California are nearly the same compared to last year, though Dallas and Boston are now better represented than Washington, D.C. The most represented foreign countries for undergraduates are still China, South Korea, India and Canada.