Is USC on the rise academically?

beyphy
Thu, 26 Jul 2012 10:27:56 +0000

“Our freshman class has three times the number of Caltech-caliber students that Caltech’s freshman class has! This is an extraordinary development. Caltech enrolls some 200 freshmen each fall. Meanwhile, USC enrolls some 550 students with the same SAT scores and grade point average as Caltech’s freshman class.”



This essentially sounds to me like he’s saying “Caltech can only enroll 200 students, whereas we can enroll 550; that means kids who could get into Caltech prefer a USC education.”

What he isn’t telling you is that:

1) Caltech is significantly more specialized than USC, so most people don’t bother applying to it.

2) Caltech’s undergraduate class is like 17x smaller than USC’s. 200 students is a lot more at caltech (possibly the majority) than 550 is at USC. And (i could be wrong about this) but i heard Caltech is the most difficult school to gain admittance into in the country. If that’s the case, it’s unlikely that all of those students, counterfactually, would have been admitted to Caltech.

3) Lastly, there’s far more to Caltech students than just GPA and SAT scorse. Many of them, for example, compete (and do well) in the USAMO. I’m not sure if the same could be said of those USC students.