<p>My S has been accepted to USC - because he is a NM finalist he’ll get a break in tuition, which makes USC suddenly more attractive than the UC’s because of the budget crisis. He will major in computer science - his only concern is that the CS dept at USC may not be as strong as the other schools he’s looking at, incl Berkeley. What do you know about it, and what about the internship/job placement opportunities for CS grads?</p>
<p>To Mom,
If your son decides to attend SC and places them first on the proper form he will not only receive half tuition, but also a $1000 award from the NMFoundation per year. If you filled out a financial aid form and you show financial need to the SC aid committee you may receive aid in addition to the NMS scholarship. </p>
<p>Keep in mind one has to qualify for financial aid. NMS funds are for merit. Incidentally, if your son decides to study abroad the scholarship “follows” him for that time. That is not always the case in other colleges.</p>
<p>Viterbi is new. Labs are state of the art. Classes are much smaller than at the UCs and they are available. Your son’s peers will be from all over the world. </p>
<p>The U.S. DOE has recently named USC Viterbi as the new site of an Energy Frontier Research Center. This will be a $12.5 million dollar center.</p>
<pre><code>The department of computer science has a new chair. Shang-Hua-Teng, a theoretical computer scientist, will add a new dynamic to the department. Dr. Teng received his Master’s degree at USC and his Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon. He has been a research affiliate professor at MIT among other appointments. He has received a NSF Career Aw
</code></pre>
<p>ard, Sloan Fellowship and the 2008 Godel Prize.</p>
<p>The new head of NASA is a Viterbi alumnus, former astronaut Charles Bolden. His M.S. in Systems Management is from USC.</p>
<pre><code>A little tidbit…one quarter of the Trojan Marching Band are engineering majors.
I am sure a student CS major will chime in here with more specific information about courses and opportunities.
</code></pre>
<p>itry,</p>
<p>It really isn’t that dangerous around campus if you’re in the right places. </p>
<p>North of campus: Right across the street from campus, we have the UV plus a lot of student housing and the Row. There is a Starbucks and 21 Choices with tables outside and you’ll always find students hanging out there either chatting or studying.</p>
<p>East: Don’t go past the freeway, but if you stay on Figueroa there are a lot of places to eat.</p>
<p>South: Directly south we have the Coliseum and a bunch of museums that are cool to check out. Don’t go further south than that.</p>
<p>West: If you stay along Vermont you’ll be ok. It’s similar to Fig in that there are quite a few places to eat. </p>
<p>Also if you go about 1-2 miles north on Fig, we have the Staples Center and LA LIVE which I described in response to an earlier question in this thread. Go a little further North on Fig and then turn right on 2nd and you’re in Little Tokyo. 1-2 Miles north of Vermont and you have Koreatown. </p>
<p>And USC students do go to Westwood quite often. We call it “Westwood Invasion” and we go to their In-N-Out and Diddy Riese.</p>
<p>Freshmen are allowed to have cars. You have to pay a semester fee for parking, and the pricing depends on the location of where you park. I have a few friends that commute and it’s definitely tough. I wouldn’t recommend it for your 1st year because you really lose a lot of opportunities to make friends. A lot of the freshman experience is doing a bunch of spontaneous things. This could be as simple as “hey let’s go to ____ dorm and hang out” or “midnight TroGro (Trojan Grounds) run!” to something more adventurous like “let’s go do a fountain run” (lol). You would miss out on a lot of these awesome bonding moments that really are highlights of undergraduate student life. 30 minutes away is definitely a doable commute, but like I said, I would at live in the dorms for at least 1 year unless it is a huge financial burden. </p>
<p>Also I wanted to point out that most USC students actually live in off-campus housing. On-campus housing primarily consists of freshmen and a few sophomores. I would definitely not say that it “isn’t safe”.</p>
<p>striker15,</p>
<p>BISC 220 is only demanding because you’re graded on a curve against other bright (and slightly crazy/neurotic) premeds… probably 600-700 of them lol. The material isn’t very difficult since you probably have seen it before in AP or IB biology, but you will need to pretty much memorize all the diagrams in the book for the chapters that are covered in class. The pace of the course is also pretty fast. You’ll cover a lot of chapters in one semester.</p>
<p>mom483, </p>
<p>I don’t know too much about the CS program here, but I do have a couple friends who are CS majors. I’ll ask them sometime and get back to you when I can.</p>
<p>Thanks georgia girl!</p>
<p>I was wondering whether or not my brother attending USC gives me any advantage as far as being accepted goes. I’ve heard it does but not entirely sure, any info will help.</p>
<p>edit to my last post</p>
<p>my sat scores and grades are higher than my brothers were when he was accepted and right now he is doing pretty well at usc with a 3.3 gpa, involved on campus and is part of a fraternity.</p>
<p>@mom483</p>
<p>I am not sure what other schools, besides Berkeley, your son is looking at for CS major? Berkeley is absolutely one of the best in the world. I would like to go to Berkeley if accepted, unless he prefers USC’s student life, or wants to have a game design concentration. Other than Berkeley, no other UCs should be considered over USC. </p>
<p>I would rank the CS major in UC in this order – Berkeley >>> UCSD > UCLA. UCLA is traditionally strong, but slipping. UCSD spent a lot of money to build a really strong faculty, but I don’t think their students that good. In general, USC, UCSD, and UCLA’s CS majors are roughly on the same level, but considering your half tuition exempt, USC wins out. USC also has strong game design curriculum, getting people to all sorts of game/animation companies.
The job placement into other companies is also great.</p>
<p>how well do you think the pre-med track prepares you? how is advising? what kind of medical schools do usc pre-med students usually go to? if i get into thematic option, do you think it’ll take away from my social life/activities at usc? (i’ve been accepted as a pre-med, but i won’t find out about TO until later.)</p>
<p>texasasian,</p>
<p>The curriculum does a fine job of preparing you for the MCAT. There was a guy last year who got a 44. That is absolutely ridiculous lol. But in general my friends have been scoring in the 30s, which is the range that you want to be in. I responded to someone else about advising, and my answer was that I couldn’t really tell you. The people there are nice and I’ve never had a bad experience with them but I haven’t talked to them enough to really gauge how useful they are and I have no clue how they stack up to advisors at other schools. You can get into any med school… I’ve heard of Yale, BU, Wake Forest, USC, various UCs, UW, Wisconsin, Utah, etc etc etc. And TO absolutely will not take away from your social life at USC lol. Many of the students who are the most involved on campus (in terms of club leadership positions etc) were in TO.</p>
<p>Is doing undergrad business at USC worth it? I frequently hear on the internet how undergrad business is a pointless degree and a waste of time. If that was the case, then why is admissions to USC’s Marshall School of Business so competitive? Why is the median starting salary for USC business grads $53,000 according to Business Week? Would it be fair to assume that an undergrad business degree is probably only worth pursuing if you’re in a top 10 undergrad business school, like USC? How are job prospects for business grads, specifically in So Cal?</p>
<p>At it currently stands, my S has been accepted to USC, UC Berkeley (Regents candidate), UCLA, UCSD and UCSB (ELC.) My H is on faculty at USC, so he would receive tuition remission by attending USC. If he gets Regents at Berkeley, it would only be for the $1,000 annual stipend, plus program benefits.</p>
<p>While awaiting decisions from 5 OOS private schools, S is thinking USC and UC Berkeley are his top choices. He is thinking of being a physics major, but likes the idea of interdisciplinary science study, possibly a double science major.</p>
<p>Setting aside financial concerns, why should he choose USC over Berkeley?</p>
<p>My daughter also had to choose between USC and Berkeley, and for her the costs (thanks to USC scholarship) ended up being almost identical at both schools. She was leaning toward Berkeley, but what finally convinced her to choose USC was</p>
<p>1) Thematic Option. At UCB her lower-division general education classes would have been, literally, in classes with students numbering in the hundreds. At USC in TO, they have been 9 students, 12 students, a couple at 24 students… </p>
<p>2) The ease of minoring, double minoring, double majoring, etc. USC encourages and makes it feasible to do so. AT UCB with the difficulty in getting needed classes, she did not feel she would have much flexibility.</p>
<p>Without the scholarship, if UCB had been 1/2 the cost of USC, we probably would have encouraged her to attend Berkeley - the cost difference would have been too much to ignore.</p>
<p>What is WRIT 340 about? Is it a required course? And how was your Organic chemistry experience at SC?</p>
<p>striker15,</p>
<p>WRIT 340 is the 2nd half of the required writing curriculum for non-TO students. WRIT140 is the 1st semester that you take during your 1st year, and you can take 340 anytime during 2nd-4th years. Most students take it during their junior year.</p>
<p>I actually really like ochem A. Try to take it with Jung/Williams if you can. They are funny and good professors. 2nd semester, however, was with Hogen-Esch and I wasn’t a fan of his style. He’s an older prof, so he doesn’t utilize technology at all. He lectures off of index cards and faces the blackboard and writes down a bunch of molecules and mechanisms while explaining things, but you can’t really pick up what he’s saying because you’re too busy trying to write down what he’s drawing on the board.</p>
<p>Any teacher recommendations for chem 105 a/b? and What do you think of taking ochem a/b over the summer? Sorry for asking several questions.</p>
<p>striker15,</p>
<p>You don’t really have options for professors with USC’s science courses. If you really wanted to avoid a certain professor, most of the time your only other option would be take it another semester. There are some cases where different professors will teach the same class in the same semester, but it doesn’t happen as often. I did like Stephens for 105b though. Also, something to note with USC’s science courses is that one course will rotate 2 or 3 professors, so even if you dislike a professor you will only have them for 1/3 or 1/2 the term.</p>
<p>Ochem over the summer can be pretty brutal… it’s very intense. You have lab something like 3x a week and pretty much a midterm every week. On the other hand, that’ll probably be the only thing you’re doing. If you think you can keep up with the pace and be disciplined enough to study hardcore daily, then do it. You’ll be happy that you don’t have to juggle ochem study time with your 3-4 other courses you’d be taking during regular fall/spring semester.</p>
<p>If I applied undecided but decide I want to major in something business related before enrolling can I do that or does anybody know what the process is? Additionally when do you select a major normally if you apply undecided and does your major need to be in CLAS?</p>
<p>cdr777,</p>
<p>I’m not positive about how Marshall major adding works if it’s before you’ve taken any classes at USC. You’d have to ask a business major about that. </p>
<p>For your second question, that’s a definite no. You can major in whatever you want, but you’ll have to actually apply for it if it’s in a different school than CLAS, whereas if you chose one within CLAS you just have to get a form signed by your academic advisor.</p>
<p>If not in TO, how big are the general class sizes? For the first year it’s probably going to be TAs like in other places, but afterwards do professors teach at the College of LAS? Especially for humanities, math, social sciences, etc. How are those programs?
Also, are freshman seminars selective? or do you just have to register? cuz they say that they keep it under 18 students per seminar or sth.</p>
<p>waikito11,</p>
<p>General class sizes differ greatly depending on the course. I’ve had courses as small as 7 to as large as 300. I’d say for the average lower division non-science lecture it’s around 40-100 students, and for non-science upper divs it’s 7-20 students. For sciences, lower divs are 150-300, upper divs are 25-50. This is only the lecture, discussions and labs for all classes have at most 30, most are usually smaller at around 20.</p>
<p>One of the things that USC prides itself in is the quality of instructors. The vast majority of courses (including 1st year ones) are taught by professors with Ph.D’s, not graduate students. The exceptions that I can think of are some foreign language courses, such as Japanese 1 and the like. Other than Japanese 1 and Advanced Korean 2, in my 8 semesters here at USC I’ve never had a non-professor instruct the lecture portion of a course. Labs and discussions are always led by grad TAs… except for my biochem TA who was also one of my professors lol.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t say freshmen seminars are selective, but I would say that a lot of the more popular ones are hard to get, simply because they have so few students in them.</p>