USC's School of Engineering Drives 42% Application Rate with Unibuddy

The Challenge

USC Viterbi faced a growing challenge: with a large international applicant pool, they needed a scalable, secure way to help prospective students feel personally connected, especially from afar. Their existing process for pairing prospects with current students was manual, time-consuming, and inconsistent, relying on spreadsheets, staff coordination, and open social platforms that lacked privacy or structure. They knew peer conversations had impact, but needed a reliable platform to make those connections meaningful and measurable.