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<p>Modern man, USC is not a regional university. And what’s up with you saying this from the other thread?</p>
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<p>I suggest you stop talking until you start to catch on to things. You’ll get there little buddy!</p>
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<p>Also you skipped the “National University” category. And it’s not called global university, it’s called “World university.” So it goes regional, national, world. Got it?</p>
<p>If we look at USNWR as a general guide (I’m aware it’s not entirely accurate), all of the universities ranked above USC are rising academically as well. The only university I see that’s not becoming more difficult to gain admission is UC Berkeley (due to budget cuts).</p>
<p>So no, I don’t believe USC is outpacing the universities ranked higher than itself. There’s nothing new that’s particularly notable about USC that would suggest this.</p>
<p>Cc123sb, Cal, like a lot of other schools, had record applications and lowest admit rate this past admission cycle.</p>
<p>Seattle, well played.</p>
<p>Correction to last post:</p>
<p>Modern, well played. :)</p>
<p>Do you really have confidence that USNWR is a valid measure of academic quality. If you do, it would be important to examine the relative rate of improvement in standing. Those relative trend lines would yield interesting data and likely more robust than a single year over year comparison.</p>
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<p>I should’ve been more specific. That was in reference to OOS applicants. Comparatively speaking, Cal has not become as difficult to gain admission as other top universities have.</p>
<p>[UC</a> admits record number of out-of-state and international students - latimes.com](<a href=“Archive blogs”>Archive blogs)</p>
<p>UofC admitted about 5,000 more OOS students (total) for the entire system, not huge numbers but rather modest, IMO.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, I’m impressed that Cal and USC have essentially similar student bodies, insofar as overall quality. It should make for an interesting football rivalry this season as well.</p>
<p>Well done Cal and USC!</p>
<p>I wonder if Cal’s entering student scores will go up if the out of state students they’re admitting have higher GPAs, SATs, etc., than the California residents it would otherwise have admitted.</p>
<p>Interesting that this discussion stretched to 13 pages. The original question seems to have a rather obvious answer - of course it is. </p>
<p>[url=<a href=“http://academic.research.microsoft.com/]Here[/url”>http://academic.research.microsoft.com/]Here[/url</a>] is something Trojans might find interesting: a huge database of academic papers in which you can specify the organization, the discipline, and the time frame (5 years, 10 years, or all-time), which would give you an idea as to how USC has improved over the past decade or so (of course, publication impact takes years to realize, but it does give you an inkling as to how USC stands next to research powerhouses recently).</p>
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<p>Note also that USC has to exceed the rate of growth of top private universities (which are already the most “aggressive” here). More importantly, whatever the top private universities do, USC has to do 2-5x as much to keep pace, simply because USC is an extremely large school. In effect, USC not only has to exceed these competitors by a magnitude that accounts for differences in size (a particularly daunting task), but it has to sustain that level of growth permanently, or else it’d just be overtaken again by its competitors, none of whom will go down without a fight.</p>
<p>Excellent link, phantas. Very interesting. </p>
<p>USC is up there even in biology, ahead of some great universities. :D</p>
<p>docfreedaddy, since you seem to agree with the New Yorker article that is critical of Stanford, I would love to see you join the discussion on the article thread here:</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/stanford-university/1330599-get-rich-u.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/stanford-university/1330599-get-rich-u.html</a></p>
<p>OK g0ld3n I did, but it is just going to make the Standfordites crazy and they were just beginning to settle down.</p>
<p>It is curious to me that a “top private university” is unquestionably equated by some to the number of citations from that university. Teaching quality, shaping life-long learners, providing a rich environment for social-emotional growth, a desire to contribute meaningfully to society and an ethic which supports benefiting society are characteristics which many would argue define a great university, perhaps more so than grinding out publications.</p>
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<p>I think it’s because that stuff is not only debatable, but can’t be measured or recorded. HOWEVER, if there were to be a publication about USC’s teaching quality, shaping life-long learners, social-emotional growth, etc. then we’re onto something! After all, if you don’t publish your research, it’s as if it never happened…Which is why the # of publications is a significant measure of a university. </p>
<p>See how that came full circle? :D</p>
<p>I’m sure if USC was forced to accept the same amount of students as ucla or cal, then USC would drop 20 ranks in USNews. If Cal accepted the same amount of students as USC (half) then Cal would probably be in the top 12 university category with a 10% acceptance rate with ridiculous SAT’s and GPA’s</p>
<p>^I don’t think you have any idea what the USNWR rankings are based on or what it takes to be a top 25 university. Acceptance rate is only 1.5% of the final score.</p>
<p>You know what you’re right. My mistake. I was too rash in replying. Either way, that’s beyond my main point. My main point is that just imagine that Cal and USC have apparently students of the same caliber, yet Cal accepts double!
If Cal only accepted as much, the stats and caliber would be just as good as any of the top 10 or even top 5.</p>
<p>I work with lots of people with undergraduate degrees from USC, UCLA and Cal, and I’d rate those coming out of Cal as the lowest of the three. I know it’s an achievement getting into Cal, but with the class sizes, you might as well be going to Ohio State. On the other hand, I’d rate Cal’s graduate students as the best of the three.</p>
<p>BTW - here’s a snippet from a recent story in SF Chronicle about UC problems -</p>
<p>The regents, meeting in San Francisco, also learned that class sizes are soaring at the world-renowned university and that undergraduates have fewer opportunities to do research than just two years ago. Provost Aim</p>
<p>our school wont be regarded as highly prestigious around the world like MIT or Stanford until we actually get on the level of research like other schools in california. Seriously, even UCSB is cranking out more research prestige and papers than us and they are a crazy party school… its sad how our school arent on the levels of some of the UC’s yet >:(</p>