@Scipio Excellent point. USC is not “gaming” the rankings. They are going after what they want… as all elite programs strive to do - or should be striving toward. They have been determined and astute enough over the past few decades to invest on a very dramatic scale… investing in quality students, in quality faculty, in student and faculty resources, in new and improved facilities, in infrastructure, etc. They are trying to apply their model with the #1 ranked USC School of Cinematic Arts to each and every school and department… striving to improve constantly. They will never be #1 at everything. No one can be. But at least they are trying…
^ Well, taking in a ton of transfers and spring admits doesn’t exactly really improve a school . . .
@tk21769, note that the admit rate and test score numbers can be gamed, however (by taking in spring admits and a ton of transfers, leading to an artificially small fall freshman class).
But I don’t put USC at the level of UCD. More at the level of UCLA/UCSD.
I’m not saying USC has not tried to actually improve their school, but yes for example their massive spring deferment policy is done to game the US News rankings. It’s great if you are a USC fan, but let’s not ignore reality, we can admit these things.
With 19,000 undergrads, 42,000 total students, and typical class sizes notably larger than other expensive private schools ahead of it in the rankings (and all of the private colleges listed in post #14), some would argue that USC gives you the impersonal large public university experience at the small private college price.
Kind of snarky, I know. But it is part of the equation.
Interesting perspective @thankyouforhelp. We actually feel you get the fun and diverse large university experience with the private school benefits. 
But yes, at the private school price. 
Although, we have found it to be worth every penny.
Just for the record, I have nothing against USC - as I said in an earlier post it’s a fine university.
I was just responding to WWWard’s assertion that it should be ranked much higher than it is (I think he even suggested the top 10). I think that claim is just as silly as the OP’s claim that USC belongs much lower in the rankings.
^ Indeed. Hard to understand the anti-USC angst. Of course… there are those who love to complain about how unfair it is that the New England Patriots keep on winning year after year too…
I do not like the Patriots, but if you want to stop them… win yourself.
There was an interesting article in the New York Times last year that speculated that some universities - they named USC and George Washington as two - managed to raise their rankings in part by raising their prices. The logic goes that people have a tendency to value things by how they are priced; there is actually support for this in the psychological literature. The argument was that since GWU and USC raised their prices so much in the interim period mentioned, wealthy parents of bright kids took notice and assumed that GWU and USC were high-quality places because they were charging so much money. So they sent their kids there, and as these two schools attracted better and better students and raised their profiles they were able to raise prices even more, and so on. And as these schools got more money, they also built new facilities and started new programs (mostly PhD programs) to increase their standing and make them look even more premium to parents and high school students.
I don’t necessarily agree 100% with the argument (there are a lot of things that go into a university other than student body), but it was an interesting argument so I thought I’d share it: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/08/education/edlife/how-to-raise-a-universitys-profile-pricing-and-packaging.html
@ThankYouforHelp Well… I do believe such. I believe that USC should be among those listed as CC’s top universities… it is certainly on par with the 19 they choose to list there. I consider it better overall than Hopkins, where I went. I would rank it in the 10-15 range. For my D2… a senior applying now, she clearly ranks it #1 - but she is a film/tv production applicant, so that makes sense to her. USC’s film school is clearly #1.
I look at these universities using a very broad perspective which includes campus, location, quality of life there, the education you receive, the alumni network, internship/job opportunities, etc. And from my perspective… those who see USC as ranked too high at 23 clearly do not know enough about all that USC is.
But that is the great thing about opinions. We all have them and are entitled to them…
Being an urban uni now is also a draw while the opposite was true in the '70’s and 80’s.
USC, NYU, and NEU (and GWU and BU to lesser extents) have risen tremendously in people’s eyes, but that is true for urban elites as well. In the '70’s, Columbia almost went bankrupt, in the '80’s, UPenn was less selective than rural Cornell, and UChicago admitted roughly half of all applicants well in to the '90’s.
Agree that their business school is top notch.
For what it’s worth, both of my son’s had very small classes (fewer than 15 students, and some with just a handful) for most of their classes at USC. Part of the draw to the school was its ability to provide the benefits of a small school experience within a large Uni. I’m like @WWWard though – we both drank the KoolAid
@CCMThreeTimes that makes sense, and it seems that would help in the rankings.
“Well… I do believe such. I believe that USC should be among those listed as CC’s top universities… it is certainly on par with the 19 they choose to list there.”
People read too much into the CC list of top universities. To begin with, notice that the schools are listed alphabetically and not in a rank order. The list is not some dynamic ranking that is updated yearly according to a precise methodology. In fact is is not updated at all. It was first devised about 14 or 15 years ago and just represented an informal compilation of the highly-ranked schools at the time. Thus it did not reflect USC’s recent admirable efforts to boost its quality. The LAC list came along some years later.
I was at an event recently where there were a handful of current Harvard undergrads sitting around and complaining about a variety of issues there. Basically, their consensus opinion was that they thought it was a joke that Harvard was ranked as a top 3 college program, especially when the focus is not on undergraduate education there. It reminded me of all the complaints that my friends and I had about Hopkins while we were there. From a diploma-status perspective, we were glad that JHU was ranked 11th (at the time), but we did not really like or respect the college then and most of us wish we had gone elsewhere. The same is likely true for these Harvard kids. They will be proud of being Harvard alumni eventually, but at least 1/2 of them said that they wish they went elsewhere.
These rankings seem to factor in the perceived quality of graduate programs, research grants, government contracts, etc. into their analysis. None of that really impacts undergraduates. The list should truly focus on the overall undergrad experience/education.
To me… kids disappointed with their college choice is all very sad. College should be the best 4 years of your life. You should truly enjoy your time there. My D1 loves it at USC. Her friends at NYU, Cornell, Dartmouth, UChicago, & Northwestern all seem unhappy or at least discontent so far. At least those at Brown, Yale, Princeton and Stanford seem happy though.
This overall focus on Rank is what is truly silly. Visit these schools, make a true connection and hopefully find a quality school where you fit in and can shine. Decide for yourself. That’s what should be important. Or at least that’s how I see it…
@WWWard it is very important to realize quality in undergraduate and graduate education may be very different at top research universities. Great point.
The difference between #25 and #23 is statistical noise.
The US News rankings have very little to do with the quality of undergrad education, so it is unlikely that any rise in US News rankings is due to an improvement in “quality of education” (which is pretty hard to define, let alone measure).
USC (and Northeastern) are known for putting lots of energy into improving their US News rankings. This tends to be the be the most effective way of rising in the rankings, much more effective than trying to improve the “quality of education”.
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/06/08/usc
http://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/article/2014/08/26/how-northeastern-gamed-the-college-rankings/
USC does not perform well in results based rankings such as Forbes and Payscale despite having large (highly ranked) engineering and business schools, a large alumni network, and an urban location in a relatively expensive part of the country.
This does make one wonder if someone has spiked the kool-aid…
Initial comment regarding USC admissions -
My response -
Response to my comment -
LOL, I was just trying to say USC’s football team isn’t anything special at the moment, not that athletics had no role in number of admissions.
As for comments about USC’s acceptance of lots of transfers and spring admits as a tactic to game the rankings, even back in the late 80s when I was going there, USC had lots of transfers and rolling admissions. That’s actually one of the things I admire about the school - it’s always been much more accommodating to non-traditional students than many, if not most, highly-ranked schools. Over on the USC forum there are occasional discussion where a few people want the school to stop accepting so many transfers and spring admits, which is an idea that I find abhorrent because it takes opportunities away from deserving students.
That said, I do think it games the rankings, but so do lots of other colleges.
Quality of undergraduate education is hard to measure quantitatively in a way that would be needed to build nicely ordered rankings. Also, few people take the same courses at more than one school, so there are not many side by side comparisons.
http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/ranking-criteria-and-weights shows that the USNWR rankings are mostly based on proxy measures. Selectivity and correlated measures are 35%, wealth (of the college) related measures are 35%, reputation is 22.5%, and relative graduation rate performance is 7.5%. Only the last can really be seen as purely a treatment effect of the college, but even that can be confounded (e.g. depending on which majors students choose, or whether the college offers “gut” majors and pushes weaker students into them).
Since October of last year, the amount of snail mail and emails received by my daughter (now a hs senior) from most of the colleges ranked in the top 25 is truly staggering. She received 18 separate items in the mail yesterday alone… albeit not all were from top-25 or even top-50 schools. But they are all apparently urging her to apply… and over and over. It is likely the same for thousands upon thousands of top candidates across the country. If you are in the 98th percentile in any conceivable way… ACT, SAT, etc… you are bound to be recruited. And the reality is… despite all of these campaigning efforts from these schools… that they also plan to reject the vast majority of those who do apply.
So why do they want 10K+ applications… or 20K+… or 30K+…?
All of these colleges want their application #s up and up. They all are trying to maximize their stats, yield rates, etc. They all want to better their rank… it’s only natural. Rice’s homepage today proudly announces that they have moved up to #15. Before, it bragged about being #5 on Niche’s ranking.
I do not really consider any of it “gaming” the system per se. They all do it. USC is no exception. They have simply done their best, especially in the past decade to better every aspect of their college… including how they are perceived externally.