USC will continue to consider legacy applicants in its admissions process, interim President Beong-Soo Kim said in an interview with the campus media on Monday. This decision comes after a California ban on legacy preferences in admissions last year that came into effect at the beginning of September.

Kim said the decision came after “careful deliberation” and due to the importance of the Trojan family.

“It seemed perverse to us that, in considering two equally qualified applicants, that we couldn’t consider that one of them had a relative who had attended USC and really, really wanted to come here as their first choice,” Kim said. “It almost felt as if we would be disadvantaging the student, who wanted to fully convey why USC was their first choice and why it was so important for them to come here, if they were admitted.”

Under Assembly Bill 1780, universities that violate the ban must report additional admissions and enrollment data to the state. The data includes the legacy status, donor status, race, county of residence, income brackets and athletic status of newly enrolled students, as well as a comparison of the admission rate of students who are provided a legacy or donor preference to those that do not.

Of the 2025-26 first-year class, 14.5% are legacy students, in line with previous years: The percentage of legacy students in each incoming class since 2020 has hovered between 13% and 15% except for the 2023-2024 class, for which data was not immediately available.

USC had the most legacy admits of private California universities in 2022, admitting 1,740 legacy students according to The Los Angeles Times. In the 2025-26 entering class, USC enrolled 545 legacy students. 

Kim said applicants must be “extremely well qualified” in order to be admitted into the school. 

“What we wanted was to continue our holistic review process where we consider that one piece of information as just a very small piece of an applicant’s overall context, experience, interests and fit with USC,” Kim said.

The interim president also said it would be “very difficult” for the University to ignore an applicant’s legacy status, as it would be inconsistent with how USC considers an applicant’s background. He said the holistic approach to looking at applications includes considering both the advantages and disadvantages an applicant has had in their upbringing.

Kim also said USC’s decision is in alignment with other private institutions, like Stanford University, that made the same decision to continue considering legacy status. Stanford withdrew from the Cal Grant program in August to continue its legacy status consideration due to a provision in the bill that has since been removed.

During the interview, Kim also said the University increased its representation of STARS students — a program that expands access to higher education for students in rural and small towns — by 30%. According to admissions data, 90 first-year students were STARS admits.

USC had a record 83,488 applicants in its most recent admit class. It admitted 9,345 and enrolled 3,759. Of the admitted students, 21% were first-generation, a slight decrease from previous years that hovered around 22% to 23% between 2020-2024. 

The University did not release admission data on international students, but Kim said there was a drop in enrollment from international students. 

The University has not disclosed the merit-based scholarship data this cycle, but Kim said USC is “using our financial aid dollars and our merit scholarship dollars as effectively as we can.”