<p>No my perception of prestige is coming from reliable ranking sources. USNWRS is a joke. I doubt you even agree with their methodology. There is a reason why no one takes it seriously anymore. 15% criteria for faculty student ratio LOL. Some great methodology right there.</p>
<p>No, the Shanghai ARWU and Forbes rankings are jokes. The USN&WR is credible though imperfect, at least at the undergraduate level.</p>
<p>sorry buddy im not going to listen to an individual who does not even attend USC. Attend USC for three years like me and then we will talk. Everyone knows the methodology for USNWRS in undergraduate institutions is faulty. A correct methodology should be the faculty peer assessments, the papers being published out, and surveys. Not some bs factors like alumni donations and faculty ratio. And funny how you also cite two unreliable sources as well. Keep digging further. USC is ranked mediocre in all 32 ranking sources I found. Our graduate reputation is not close to the level of uc berkeley, stanford, or the ivies. Maybe in 15-20 years our school will actually be at their level</p>
<p>indigomy, can you please suggest some better methodology that is better then? i think stuff like student/faculty ration is more important that academic quality. I chose USC because i wanted to make connections, friends who will be influential, and get a better overall experience, not for academics. If i wanted academics, I wouldve applied to less fun schools like chicago or something…</p>
<p>I</p>
<p>Inigomy, </p>
<p>Aren’t you the poster that changed his user name, was thought to be a ■■■■■ and was found have all sorts of discrepancies in your claim to have been a trustee award student?</p>
<p>Yes and according Inigomy’s former posts he was at USC for two years, now it’s three years…perhaps he will have graduated by the next 10 posts???He seems to be a ■■■■■ who exists solely to denigrate USC.</p>
<p>Student faculty ratios mean nothing until you need a faculty recommendation for law school, grad school, etc., lol.</p>
<p>indigomy2 you are a ■■■■■ and USNWRS is a reliable mention of ranking colleges. That is why most people use the USNWRS ranking. I also remember you on other forums and I don’t know why you have a grudge against USC. Why do I have a feeling that you weren’t accepted into USC when you applied and now hold a grudge???. From looking at your profile I can tell that you are 21. This means that you have just graduated college or about to graduate college. Maybe you haven’t found a job and are jealous of USC graduates because they found a job through the Trojan Family??? Whatever the reason stop being a ■■■■■.</p>
<p>What name did indigomy2 post under previously?</p>
<p>There was one drawback to having courses with fewer than ten students: the professor would call you if you missed class… Oh, the pain of getting what you pay for.</p>
<p>Fight On!</p>
<p>Here’s what I find embarrassing. It’s from an LA Times article entitled, “Higgs boson: was July 4 announcement a blow for U.S. science?”</p>
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<p>It’s worth noting, however, that many, many Americans are members of the research teams at CERN. The California contingent alone is vast – and high-placed. Joe Incandela, who presented the results Wednesday for the CMS collaboration, is a professor at UC Santa Barbara. Also on the CMS team are physicists from UC San Diego, UC Riverside, UCLA, UC Davis and Caltech. ATLAS, the LHC’s other Higgs-hunting team, counts scientists from UC Berkeley, UC Irvine, UC Santa Cruz and Stanford among its ranks.</p>
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<p>[Higgs</a> boson: Was July 4 announcement a blow for U.S. science? - latimes.com](<a href=“Higgs boson: Was July 4 announcement a blow for U.S. science?”>Higgs boson: Was July 4 announcement a blow for U.S. science?)</p>
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</p>
<p>So they named off every UC. Who cares. How do you think Merced feels?</p>
<p>Merced doesn’t put on airs about being an elite, prestigious university. </p>
<p>If USC wants to be compared with places like Berkeley, UCLA, Stanford and Caltech, it needs to participate alongside them in this type of research.</p>
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<p>So, because corporations use science and corporations are evil, science is evil. Sound argument, there.</p>
<p>
Haha, that’s maybe the most insecure-sounding post in this thread full of insecure-sounding posts. Congrats. I’m sure the reason you didn’t apply to Chicago is because it wasn’t fun… because you would’ve been a shoo-in if you got into the more influential school, USC. Right? Right?!</p>
<p>Well, Fickle, speaking as someone who was in fact admitted to both USC and the University of Chicago, they’re different schools.</p>
<p>What I like about U of C is that it is rare among American universities in that it’s a school that’s unapologetically about ideas, thus the university has a reputation for producing academics. Where USC is strong is that it genuinely combines both liberal AND professional learning, meaning that you not only get a nice generic collegiate foundation, but can also direct that towards earning a living. In my case, I would’ve been happy as an English major at either Berkeley (top English department in the country) or at the University of Chicago (fantastic “great books” curriculum on the undergrad level), but film school at USC was a way to turn my interests in film, television, literature, technology, etc. into a way of earning a living. The cliche here in L.A. (rightly so) is that if you want to be smart, go to UCLA, but if you want to be rich, go to USC.</p>
<p>Keep in mind that one of the great strengths of the American higher education system is its diversity (unlike the horrible K-12 system). If you want to study forestry, there are great schools for that. If you want to study medicine with a particular emphasis in one field, there are great schools for that. Different schools have different strengths, and that’s why, as this thread indicates, USC has only recently achieved the “good across the board” reputation. Individual schools like the film school have pretty much always had that reputation, but it’s only recently become true of the whole university.</p>
<p>Fickle, if you have nothing to contribute to my original post then don’t contribute please.</p>
<p>I also wanted to echo Simba’s post #79, about USC constantly telling people that it’s world-class this and world-class that. This is what I meant earlier when I said that USC had the putrid stench of new money.</p>
<p>The thing that I think people forget is that USC is very much a university “of” Southern California, meaning that it reflects the character of the region from which it comes. I am a native of Pittsburgh, and Carnegie-Mellon and Pitt are radically different schools from USC and UCLA even though CMU is ranked right alongside them, as is Pitt in many medical programs.</p>
<p>L.A. was built on entertainment, tech, biotech, defense, aerospace, and a bit of oil, with entertainment overshadowing all the other industries. By comparison, Pittsburgh was built on steel mills and coal mines. Those are radically different industries which shaped those cities and their residents in radically different ways. The Lakers throughout the 80s referred to themselves and their fast break offense as “showtime,” while by comparison the Steelers would never draft let alone sign any player who ever showboated in any way whatsoever.</p>
<p>If you look at USC and so many of the top high schools around the area that feed into it, that’s where you get TV shows like The OC and the Real Housewives of Orange County. It’s an in your face materialism that other cities and other regions don’t have… though of course what’s funny about that is how none of those people ever have any money in the bank! ;)</p>
<p>USC’s strengths are also in 21st century industries like film and television, interactive media, and various forms of communication. Those industries are all new enough that the rest of the country hasn’t caught up with them and the fact that USC grads disproportionately run Hollywood isn’t fully grasped by folks around the country in the same way that Stanford’s imprint on Silicon Valley is well known.</p>
<p>Give USC time and the world will catch up with it. The undergrad program is great and getting better every day and in the meantime, the rest of the university is filling up around it. USC is in the right place at the right time, and as I tell people in my extended family, it’s the anti-Pittsburgh. That city has been in decline for decades, as has all the Rust Belt, and that’s why younger people have been leaving the Rust Belt and moving TO places like California, Texas, Florida, and Arizona.</p>
<p>Well said. USCalum05 nailed it on the head.</p>
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Don’t start a ■■■■■-bait thread and then act surprised when ■■■■■■ appear, okay? I’m surprised you’re singling me out after reading through some of the other posts in this thread.</p>
<p>To me, while I agree USC’s reputation is improving, there are certain things holding USC back. One is its giant undergrad enrollment, which almost ensures that it’s not going to be able to get a class full of the brightest students. Another is the fact that it’s a very sports-focused school. While you can certainly have a great athlete who is also very smart, it’s unlikely. And by great athlete, I mean someone good enough to potentially go pro. You don’t see many athletes in top 10 schools going pro, do you? USC’s improving, but its reputation lags relative to its high ranking. Just look at what schools surround USC on USNWR: Georgetown, Carnegie, Berkeley. I doubt anyone would doubt those 3 schools’ academic reputation compared to USC. I’d even add UCLA to that list.</p>
<p>Another thing hindering USC being viewed as an academically elite school is exactly what USCAlum said: the school’s strengths lie in fields like film and media, fields that are not exactly viewed as “academic”. Are you really saying that Stanford’s prestige due to Silicon Valley – started by genius programmers, engineers, etc. – is comparable to USC’s due to Hollywood? To work in Silicon Valley, you need to actually be smart. To work in Hollywood…</p>
<p>@Fickle your comments regarding sports are ridiculous. You can deffinetly characterize a school maybe the size of a high school with its sports culture, but USC’s dedication to sports has nothing to do with its academics. You mentioned the size of USC’s undergrad as a way of limiting the number of top students. That doesn’t really make sense. Wouldn’t it allow for more top students to attend the university. Also for a school that you mentioned has a large undergrad population, USC only has nine mens varsity sports. I wouldn’t really call that a sports focused school. By going with stereotypes, if you were to have 12 stupid basketball players and 60 stupid football players, that wouldn’t hinder the academic reputation of a University of 37,000 students.</p>