Any rejection is disappointing, but it’s especially frustrating when that rejection comes from a dream school in the early application rounds. Most majors at USC offer Early Action admissions, and no binding option. For the Marshall School of Business, though, there is an ED route to admission. However, whether you were rejected ED or EA, the result is the same. You’re having to figure out what comes next, and that’s where we can help.
First, let’s look at some numbers. The overall acceptance rate for the Class of 2029 was . The Early Action acceptance rate that same year was actually lower than the overall at 8.4%. This is because the majority of EA applicants were actually deferred — neither rejected nor accepted — and the percentage of deferred applicants who were eventually admitted was 5.7%.
This is all to say that actually only a small number of early applicants to USC are rejected. Out of 42,119 EA applicants for the Class of 2029, 34,983 were deferred, or 83%. Being rejected early requires a significant issue with the application. In this post, we’re going to break down what that issue may have been, and how an understanding of it should inform your next steps as Regular Decision and EDII application deadlines approach.
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Below are the four steps that you need to be taking to increase your chances of strong college acceptances, along with insight into why your early application to USC may have been doomed from the start.
Step One: Take a Break
First, you need to cut yourself some slack. Not permanently, obviously, but for a day or two. Giving yourself a moment to recharge will benefit you in the coming weeks. So, eat some ice cream. Enjoy a guilty pleasure show. Go out to your favorite coffee shop with a close friend. Then, get back to work.
Step Two: Strategize
Before we can talk strategy, we need to do an application autopsy for your USC app. Ideally, we’d get to see your specific application, but there are three things that most likely lead to your early rejection.
First, you may not have had the grades for USC. The of applicants to USC for the Class of 2029 had GPAs between 3.59 and 3.97. This means that 25% of applicants had a GPA above 3.97 and 25% had a GPS below 3.59. However, the middle 50% of accepted students had a GPA that fell between 3.87-4.00. If you submitted with a GPA below 3.75, that is a strong indicator of why you were rejected.
The second possibility is scores. If you have a GPA within, but on the lower end, of the 3.87-4.00 range and either did not submit SAT or ACT scores, or submitted scores that were not impressive, that is another possibility for your rejection. A strong standardized test score underlines your academics, and can serve to augment your GPA when there are weak points (like a few less-than-awesome grades). If you did submit scores and your SAT was under 1500 or your ACT was under 33, that is a strong signal for why you were rejected.
The third possibility is more subjective: they didn’t like you or believe you. Something in your application was a red flag for them. They didn’t buy what you were selling, or didn’t want it even if they believed you. We aren’t calling you a liar — we don’t know you — but USC has strong enough suspicions to warrant a rejection over a deferral.
There is no one type of student who gets into a school like USC, as they look for students offering a range of perspectives and experiences. However, every highly-selective school is looking for students of strong moral character and with developed passions and deep interests.
As you reassess your college list, keep this in mind. You need 3-4 target schools, 3-4 safety schools, and 2-3 reaches that are strong matches academically, but that also match with who you are as a person. The next step, after making your new college list, is to figure out exactly how to communicate those key characteristics about yourself that will make a college excited to offer you a spot.
Step Three: Essays
After your grades and scores, the most important piece of your college applications is how you present yourself in writing. You can’t change your activities or suddenly gain another leadership role, but the stories you tell about who you are, what you love, and why you do it are what will guide an application reader towards checking “accept.”
We’ve had students get into Ivies who have included walking their dog on their activities list, so simply doing ‘impressive’ things isn’t the solution to your problem — especially since you don’t have time to revamp how you’ve spent the past three and a half years. Instead, it’s all about the stories that you tell and how you capture the readers’ imaginations. Storytelling, then, is critical. Using sophisticated storytelling techniques like dialog and imagery is critical. But what if you don’t know how to implement that sort of style? That’s where we, or even a trusted teacher, can help. Of course, having expertise in college admissions specifically is the best option, but a well-trained literary eye can still be a useful asset as you approach rewriting your essays and supplements.
Step Four: Ask For Help
The final step is to make the bold move of asking for help. It is easy to either try to go it alone on your college applications (they are yours after all) or to welcome feedback from all the wrong places. You friend who is a good writer, a sibling who got into a good college, or even parents who last applied to college two decades ago are not, in actuality, great resources for college admissions advice. They love you and they want the best for you, and they don’t really know what they are talking about. That isn’t for lack of passion or effort, but it is because they aren’t immersed in this world admissions cycle after admissions cycle. Getting support from a true expert makes a massive difference for outcomes — and that’s where we can help.
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