The University of South Carolina admitted its biggest and brightest class of students yet in the spring. Now they are flooding campus and moving into their first dormitories.
The incoming class of Gamecocks is 4,550 strong, with an average SAT score of 1198. That’s 150 students and 10 points more than last years class.
Freshman move-in began early Friday morning, with most students arriving Saturday.
All first-year students are required to live on campus, and renovations on the 554-bed Patterson Hall were finished this week, just in time to accommodate the class.
The school plans to add 200 new faculty members over the next two years to keep up with the growing student population, which is now 30,000, including graduate students.
USC Admissions Director Scoot Verzyl said for every student admitted, the school received three more applications. He said the uptick in applications can be attributed to years of recruiting and marketing programs. But it also comes full circle, with desirability driven by the university’s growing reputation, which is partially due to growing classes.
“If you have a larger graduating class you have more people out in the workforce, more people doing great things as undergraduates and going on to great things as graduates and in the work force,” Verzyl said. “That’s going to raise the reputation of the university and the fact that the class gets more selective creates a level of desirability too.”
About 58 percent of the freshman class is from South Carolina, and students from 39 states and 13 countries account for the rest. The school also said that African-American enrollment increase 8 percent this year.
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