Cutthroat, laidback school list

SWHarborfan
Thu, 27 Jan 2011 02:59:42 +0000

I think that this discussion now borders on the petty and anecdotal ('cause I sure as heck wouldn’t pay for my kid to go to USC for engineering over Harvey Mudd, for example, and I would imagine that grad. schools would look more favorably upon (given the same GPAs and GREs to consider) Harvey Mudd and Rice and MIT (really Jose’s high school acceptance list) over 'SC.

That said, the top student(s) at 'SC is the academic equal of the top student(s) at Cal Tech/MIT/CAL/Cornell/UCLA/TUFTS/CMU/Cal State San Luis Obispo/Michigan State/Univ. of Arizona/Harvey Mudd/Princeton/etc. That is a finite and special minority of student who lives at the top of the “food” (e.g. grade) chain. The air and the students are certainly different, more rarified, up there.

More importantly, re: USC, do they still parade that white steed around at the home, football games, whereupon the student body and alums get an almost maniacal gleam in their eyes and do a funny sort of collective saluting. And is it the same horse, 'lo all these generations of football games? I mean wouldn’t the horse be kind of decrepit and old, by now??