Isn't it time to add USC to CC Top University List?

[warblersrule]

I’m not sure how often the CC administrators review this list.

They don’t. Every so often someone complains (USC and NYU supporters are the most commonly offended parties), but it inevitably goes nowhere. Most recently a ridiculous petition on the NYU board garnering 200 signatures was blithely ignored. In any case, this should be posted in [another</a> part of the forum](<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/community-forum-issues/]another”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/community-forum-issues/).

From the horse’s mouth:

@Obiwan

Because the list is arbitrary, there is nothing to update. It’s not an “official” anything. There were and always could be discussions about the schools at the margins, either way. The US New Rankings have little underlying validity but were used as rough cut because so many posters are obsessed by them.

The groupings are provided for convenience only. If anyone isn’t happy with the groupings, they may start their own website and come up with their own groupings.

Finally, if anyone is seriously going to be affected by whether their school is listed in large type or small type, then they are disregarding all the excellent advice on this board about “fit” and have more problems than the CC staff can deal with in any event.

@Roger_Dooley

Our list is somewhat arbitrary, but matches the general perception of many college-bound students and has quite a bit of overlap with common ranking schemes. As with any selection process, when you get near the cutoff, there are legitimate arguments as to why one school could be included or another not. (It’s not just academic rankings - look at college football rankings, the BCS selections, or any other selection process that has a cutoff. The selections at the margin are always the toughest.)

We acknowledge that the lists are subjective, so please don’t lobby for inclusion or exclusion of particular schools.

@tokenadult

We discussed this on the moderation team. The consensus response is for all users of CC to take home this message: the listing of certain colleges as top LACs and certain universities as top universities is ultimately ARBITRARY. There is debatability at the margins about what universities belong on the list. In particular, no one affiliated with CC advocates that a college applicant should only consider universities on that list and disregard other universities. There are a lot of universities worth applying to.