Our experience and take-away's from Explore

hayden
Fri, 14 Apr 2006 20:05:50 +0000

I warn you this is the parent speaking! But here are some thoughts from Explore USC:


USC is cool, even when the weather is also cool!
Overheard from another family sitting nearby, after the day had ended: “We just did the admitted students’ thing at UCLA. At UCLA they kept telling us that you’re not a number at UCLA, but they treated us like we were. Not once did USC mention that, and we felt it was personal all the way - they don’t talk about personal attention, they just give it.”
Having lunch in the big room, when the band suddenly comes in playing the USC fight song - Now, that was fantastic. Wow, what an experience. For someone who had never experienced the Trojan thing, even I was blown away.
The campus is 1 mile from the center of downtown LA, but you’d never know it. The campus is compact, self-contained, beautiful. Loved the architecture. It was like Boston College, only with a southern california flair.
Why the heck do they have a statue to a dog eating a tire?
USC appears (to someone who has seen many, many colleges now) to steer away from emphasizing any one school. For example, unlike NYU, where CAS and Steinhardt are clearly not at the level of Tisch and Stern, so they spend a lot of time simply referring to Stern and Tisch; or Michigan, where the campus is completed divided (Fine Arts, Music & Engineering are practically in a different state); USC has different schools. But they don’t speak 90% of the time about CNTV or Marshall. They talk about “USC”. We liked that.
The only place you can buy a more expensive sweatshirt is if it were sold in Tiffany’s, and came with a diamond necklace.
People were all very friendly and nice. The clerk in the bookstore went out of his way to help us hide the USC stuff we bought, with D standing nearby. Everyone seemed very personal. Probably our biggest and nicest surprise.


Anyway, just some random thoughts and take-away’s from our visit. Good luck, everyone.