@Qwerty568 isnt Boston College religious? I don’t know if I want to be at a religious school like that. Are they really strict?
I don’t think Northwestern is much like USC in terms of social scene and sports (NU is not very party- or sports- focused), and I think NU is slightly more difficult to get into.
BC is Jesuit. It is religiously affiliated but really isn’t strict about it, IMO. An atheist/liberal person wouldn’t feel uncomfortable or pressured. It’s most like Georgetown, if you know that school better.
@thatrunnerkid Not sports focused? Northwestern is a big ten school.
@Qwerty568 Athletic events have very low attendance. At pretty much every football game, fans of the other team visibly outnumber NU fans, and I’d imagine the same applies to other sports but I haven’t been to any games. Ha. Plus, the student newspaper has reported on chronically underattended basketball games. There is a small community of undergrads enthusiastic about sports, but that’s exactly the point: the amount of people that care heavily about sports is small.
It sort of stretches my imagination to have Lehigh and Clemson mentioned in the same sentence. In short, no.
The schools, I think most resemble SC on many fronts are BC and SMU…
“USC is still mainly white”
?? I dont THINK so…
http://www.usc.edu/admission/undergraduate/firstyear/prospective/profile.html
2014-2015
Student Demographics (Fall 2014)
Rounded to the nearest percentile Asians 18%
Black/African-American 5%
Hispanic 12%
White/Caucasian 33%
International 23%
Other 9%
http://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg01_tmpl.jhtml?schoolId=1138
overall student population
0.2% American Indian/Alaskan Native
26.2% Asian
5.0% Black/African-American
15.4% Hispanic/Latino
5.4% Multi-race (not Hispanic/Latino)
0.1% Native Hawaiian/ Pacific Islander
43.4% White
4.3% Unknown
every year USC becomes more an mirror of Calif’s overall ethnic population.
The school spirit at USC on game day is unbeatable. Loyal alumni is another point for USC. I don’t know if OP put more weight in these categories. I would say Texas A&M would be in this category.
“The school spirit at USC on game day is unbeatable.”
So strong they hardly ever fill their football stadium.
http://www.latimes.com/sports/usc/uscnow/la-sp-usc-home-game-attendance-dip-20141216-story.html
The Coliseum seats over 93,000. The average attendance at USC is 20,000 less than capacity.
Not the Coliseum but on campus.
Considering USC’s enrollment is ~45,000 I’d say filling a stadium with ~75K people is pretty good.
These are some private schools that are roughly the same in terms of academic quality, selectivity, and rah-rah school spirit:
Notre Dame - stronger academically, but about as selective and rah-rah as USC
Georgetown - ditto
Boston College - a bit less selective, but very close academically and rah-rah-wise
Colgate - Similar quality and for a LAC, they’re into sports
And here are some without as much of the rah-rah aspect:
Emory - Better academics but not quite as selective as USC
Carnegie Mellon - Better academics and about as selective as USC
Tufts - About equal academically and about as selective as USC
Lehigh - About equal academically but not as selective as USC
Visitor section sightlines are horrible at the L.A. Coliseum. The place was built for Olympic track and field.
USC football has a huge following among non-USC affiliated locals as well. L.A. doesn’t have a local NFL team.
Unlike in cold, dreary places like southeast Michigan, there’s plenty of stuff to do in LA. There’s more to people’s lives in California than obsessing about college football.
^ It could also be a stadium to host the Olympics for a 3rd time:
http://www.latimes.com/sports/olympics/la-sp-sn-usoc-los-angeles-2024-summer-olympics-20150901-story.html
U$C will pay for improvements.
“Unlike in cold, dreary places like southeast Michigan, there’s plenty of stuff to do in LA. There’s more to people’s lives in California than obsessing about college football.”
There’s the real Trojan Spirit! USC is located in tough neighborhood in smog plagued LA. Not really something to really brag about IMO.
“Considering USC’s enrollment is ~45,000 I’d say filling a stadium with ~75K people is pretty good.”
Not really. You do realize that USC has hundreds of thousands of alumni right? If the Trojan Spirit were so strong, most games should be sold out. Using excuses that there are better things to do in Southern California just proves that perhaps the Trojan Spirit isn’t all that remarkable when it cones to supporting the home team.
Sorry, I’m not super knowledgable about sports, but why would you expect alumni to come to the average football game? A lot of them probably don’t live in the LA area anyway? I have no connection to USC so I’m not biased, just curious.
rjkofnovi
1-MOST USC games are televised. Check the networks to see how many people watch USC games on TV to get a good gauge of USC “Spirit”
2- parking is ridiculously hard to find around the coliseum, hence it is mostly students who can walk there from USC who attend the games.
3- Have you ever even been to the coliseum?? There are entire sections that either are closed off or have lousy sight lines to the field.
Stanford stadium also used to be able to hold 95,000 but that hardly ever happened either , despite Stanford’s also having hundreds of thousands of alumni. That does not mean there is not tremendous school spirit at that university. This assertion-
“You do realize that USC has hundreds of thousands of alumni right? If the Trojan Spirit were so strong, most games should be sold out”
is without merit.
Cost of admission to a Michigan football game was two cans of Coca-Cola. Seriously.
http://www.sbnation.com/2014/9/22/6831037/michigan-will-give-you-2-free-tickets-for-2-cokes
I grew up in Big Ten country, and they are a lot more obsessive about college sports than folks on the west coast. I don’t know if that’s something to be extremely proud of, though.
University of Texas is probably the closest match to USC. Proud alumni and strong networking culture, jock school but you also have your academic and artsy types. Greek system is big but you can be social without them. Both have strong film schools but SC is tops when it comes to film.
Next best match is University of Miami.