Soooo does USC have higher standards for NMSF's?
I've got a nagging feeling that I'm gonna be rejected from USC the moment they see that I'm average for their admitted applicant pool, but a NMSF. Is there any evidence to suggest that they do hold NMSF's do a higher standard? Would emailing them about this be silly?
Posted Apr 17, 2018, 2:56 AM UTC
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Emailing them about it would be silly. However, I think you are right to believe that USC has higher standards for NMSFs. USC gives out generous merit based aid, so there must be a catch: they cannot give out incredible aid to everyone available. They have to give out that aid sparingly. Also interestingly, financial aid is one of the biggest expenses for any school. Considering that USC gives out good merit based aid, it seems like an interesting coincidence that the normal price for attending USC is absorbant. This leads to my anecdotal evidence:
In my school, there are two people that I know that got into USC, my friend and me. Another one of my friends applied to USC but did not get in, which is quite strange considering that he is an objectively better student than us in every single aspect. He has a 4.0, 36 ACT, great extracurriculars, captain of the swim team, and even had a legacy.
Unfortunately, he was also a national merit semi finalist, so even though he appeared to be an excellently qualified student, I believe USC could have seen his application and not felt like they wanted to pay so much in aid, so they just rejected him. :(
I agree. One of my friends is a NMF and got rejected. She had a 4.1 UW (4.0 scale where 4.3 is A+), 1570 SAT, aced like 10 APs (half of which were self-studied), started her own business, etc. She got into 3 T20s.
On the other hand, I have a friend with a 3.5 UW, lower SAT, and barely any ECs who got in. She wasn’t a NMSF, and didn’t get into any other T20s. She also applied to engineering which I believe is more selective? So anecdotally, it seems this theory is true.
Craaap
The thing is, it doesn't even help to omit NMSF status on your application. USC requests a full list of all NMSF candidates that they can cross-reference with the Common App and identify those students. In addition, there was a recent post on this sub that had a survey of USC applicants and statistical significance test that determined it was harder for NMF's to get in this year.
Anecdotally, it was the same in my district as well. 3 NMF's were rejected (me being one of them), and the 3 that got accepted all were not NMFs.