My kids both said after walking around Stanford, “this is like heaven.” They might have a better chance getting in there than they did Stanford.
@Scipio someone on our USC tour said that when we started walking through the film school bldg - with the movie props encassed, it did look like a bit Disney-esque.
Amandakayak, we had visited Paramount Studios, a tour of a real working studio/not amusement park like Universal Studios, the day before we toured USC. When they took us through the film school, we were blown away. It’s like being at Paramount but smaller scale.
Both USC and ucla have amazing campuses. Make sure your D applies to USC by Dec 1 (is that still the date? Confirm!) so she’s considered for their super generous merit awards. If I’m recalling correctly, there was no special app or essay for the merit award, unlike washu, which had a whole separate merit application with several essays.