<p>Talking about ranking in this situation is stupid. Sure, USC is one or two places higher than UCLA/UCSD with the engineering dept, UCSD ranks one or two places higher than USC/UCLA for the life science dept, and UCLA may rank one or two places higher than UCSD/USC for the overall “well-roundedness”, but are these small marginal differences really that big of a deal to put so much impact into one person’s decision for choosing which school out of these three to attend?</p>
<p>All three schools are excellent schools. Just because you attend a school that ranks lower than the other schools doesnt mean you are not going to learn as much materials. The critical thing is the personal preference. It takes more than department rankings to finalize one’s decision. It seems the the OP loved USC more than the other two for various reasons. Each school has their own style, strength and weaknesses, and it’s up to the OP himself to do the evaluation on each schools to come up with the decision.</p>
<p>All these “USC ranks higher than UCLA” type of crap arguments holds very little value in this matter.</p>