It’s now number 23. I still think UC Davis is better than USC though. Only reason USC is so high up is because they game the rankings by offering many merit scholarships to students who otherwise would go to other schools.
Although I do think their business school is top notch.
Well that’s an opinion. Have any evidence or data to back up your claim? You don’t really have any ethos.
@shareef, USC has been in the top 25 for years now, so the 2017 ranking should not be a surprise. Also, USC has several top-notch schools (business, engineering…) If you look at the scholarship thread, you’ll see that scholarships are highly competitive and few students, in proportion to the entire student body, receive them, so that reason doesn’t quite fly.
Deferring a lot of less qualified accepted applicants to the spring semester (so their stats don’t count in the ranking calculations) has a lot more to do with it than awarding some merit scholarships. USC is a very good school, but it is less subtle than most in how it games the rankings.
Northeastern University’s President Aoun was previously dean of Arts and Sciences at USC.
That’s no different than what Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, Yale, Berkeley, et.al, do.
Huh at @simba9? Neither Harvard, Stanford, Princeton or Yale offer merit based aid.
But regardless as @ThankYouforHelp said, a big factor in USC’s rise was the practice of deferring large numbers of students to spring semester. They also keep numbers low for first year admits and will accept lots of transfer students later on. Spring admits and transfer students scores and their graduation rates don’t factor into US News.
@Dimnarion , OK, you’re right. I wasn’t focused on the “merit” aspect. Rather, I was focused on the fact that the schools mentioned will pay the bulk of the educational costs if needed, so unless the family is very wealthy, it’s more likely that accepted students will get more money from schools like Harvard and Stanford than USC.
By attracting and investing in top faculty and top students, and by making its already outstanding film, business, communications and engineering programs even better. (A good football team doesn’t hurt, either.) In other words, USC wanted to be more than the University of Spoiled Children. And succeeded. If that’s gaming the rankings, long live gaming of rankings.
That’s not a factor these days.
Fair or not, athletics are a major factor in how high profile your college is among high school students, and thus, how many applications you get from those students and how selective you can appear to be.
Notre Dame, for example, is automatically known by at least 90 percent of high school students because of its football prowess, and has been for the past century. Meanwhile, the University of Chicago dropped sports inh the 1940s and completely fell off the radar for the overwhelming majority of high school students. The fact that UChicago had 89 Nobel Prizes and Notre Dame had 2 did not mean a hill of beans, but Notre Dame’s national championships and TV exposure from football sure did. It is no coincidence that Duke and Georgetown shot up in the national consciousness (and selectivity and college rankings) when they developed high profile and extremely successful basketball teams. Chicago has overcome that anonymity among applicants, but it took a lot of mailings and advertising to get caught up with the built-in awareness that Notre Dame always could take for granted because of sports (or that 8 schools in the East always could take advantage of because of their membership in the Ivy League).
USC benefits from the same sort of athletic exposure and success as Notre Dame.
Exactly @CCMThreeTimes & @katliamom
To me, USC should be ranked much higher than 23. In my opinion, the Niche Rankings are far more accurate than the US News Rankings, especially in terms of qualifying and quantifying all of the aspects that eventually prove important to students once they are there in attendance.
For example, I attended JHU. I personally think that the Niche ranking at 39 is far more accurate than the US News ranking at 10. And now that I am a parent, evaluating my child’s experience at college (USC) and also experiencing all of the resources, communication, web presence, alumni networking, etc. that USC makes available, I find Niche’s ranking of USC (where my daughter attends) at 10 to be far more accurate that the US News rank of 23. USC is quite simply a well-oiled machine in terms of delivering all that a parent perceives to be important while also making the total college experience what the student wants too.
USC has excellent business and engineering schools, a communication school on the rise, a top 5 drama school and the #1 film school. Its campus is excellent and expanding / improving with 100s of millions in development funds raised over the last decade. The new USC Village is going to be a gorgeous expansion. Its location in L.A., and all of the internships and job opportunities that arise from such are staggering. The weather is nearly unrivaled. It offers more majors and minors than any other school… more student organizations than any other school… has more international students in attendance than any other school, etc., etc. Its global reach is immense, and its alumni network and how they aid each other may be the biggest selling point overall. After all, the end game is careers and networking toward even better opportunities after graduation. The Trojan Network is stellar in assisting their own.
And… there is simply a lot more to the college experience overall than just ranking undergraduate majors or perceived reputations from afar. So… to this year’s applicants, choose wisely, look at the Niche rankings and survey results too… and above all – visit each finalist school in person before deciding. Good luck…
I personally have USC and JHU at the same level: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/1893105-ivy-equivalents-ranking-based-on-alumni-outcomes-take-2-1-p1.html
In any case, USC does game very unsubtlely (that a look at how many transfers and spring admits they take). But it also has a strong alumni network and is strong in many other ways.
Well… USC can continue to rise in the all of the various rankings, but apparently such will never sway CC. They still contend that USC is not among the nation’s Top-27 universities (8 Ivies + CC’s list of top universities).
To CC… these 19 colleges are all still superior:
California Institute of Technology, Carnegie Mellon University, Duke University, Emory University, Georgetown University, Johns Hopkins University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Northwestern University, Rice University, Stanford University, University of California - Berkeley, University of California - Los Angeles, University of Chicago, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill, Uversity of Notre Dame, University of Virginia, Vanderbilt University, Washington University in St. Louis.
To me… that is just silly any way you choose to evaluate it. Whatever the reasoning behind that initial bias when the list was created years ago, CC should just get over it and update their list already…
A few stats for comparison:
…UC Davis …USC
Classes < 20 … 35.80%…60.60%
Classes 20-49 … 37% …27.50%
Classes >=50 … 27.30%…11.80%
(source: USNWR)
Admit rate …38% …18% (source: USNWR)
SAT-M median …560-700 …660-760 (source: collegedata.com)
SAT-CR median …520-650 …620-720 (source: collegedata.com)
4y grad rate …54% …76% (source: Kiplinger’s)
instructional spending … $747,272,982.00 … $1,635,754,000.00 (source: IPEDS)
students …36,104 …42,469 (source: Wikipedia)
spending/student …$20,697.79 … $38,516.42 (derived from preceding numbers)
Avg Professor Salary … $128,180 … $162,700 (source: startclass; figure is for full professor, 9 months)
@WWWard… USC superior to UCLA and Cal? Them’s fighting words 
(Go Bruins, Go Bears… can you tell where I went to school? But I agree with you that USC is excellent, and just keeps getting better. With its vast resources there is no reason it can’t be, within a decade or two or three, the Stanford of SoCal.)
@katliamom LOL There’s no defeating college alliances / loyalties. I love that. #NeverGraduate
I love that, too 
@WWWard
“Only reason USC is so high up is because they game the rankings by offering many merit scholarships to students who otherwise would go to other schools.”
USC is not “gaming the rankings.” They are buying talent - both on the faculty and in the student body. Nothing wrong or underhanded about that. They just decided a decade or two ago to spend money to increase the quality of their school. And they have done that very well. In fact I can’t think of a better example. The example of USC should be a case study for other colleges to learn how it is done.