The enigmatic USC.

isabel86
Sun, 25 Mar 2007 16:50:35 +0000

Hi all,
I find USC to be THE most enigmatic university, by that i mean, one hears too many positives AND negatives about anything concerned to it.I donno why i never hear THAT much about anything else. For example take the reputation matter, some say, “All you need to be a is, a trojan, and you are honored everywhere.” and some, "Thats only if you are going to settle in So Cal.

Then lets move on to the value for money stuff, " 30K!! Its not worth it" and then something like… " you DO get your money’s worth".

The academics…“USC is THE place for PhD…even guys from MIT and Stanford come here for their PhDs…and for MS…the guys for MS are like cows…they mint money for the research of the PhD’s”…“USC has excellent faculty but they only let the PhD guys do the research and MS guys dont have a chance…so its waste of all the facilities and the elite faculty,coz you never get to say see your professor, the classes are never interactive”…and to confuse more than what i already am…" Its the same faculty who will teach your courses so it is excellent and you get personal attention too"

The admissions…some of the people say that its very difficult to get in…
and some say, “all you need to do is apply”…i believe in the latter…mainly coz…
i have seen it myself…i got into USC for fall 2007 for engineering and couple of my friends got too…the only difference is that i have a GRE score around 1500 and my friends 1000…whatever happened to the selective process.

And social life… some say ‘ghetto’,‘frat party’ and ‘frat party’…and some others…’ Work hard AND party hard '…

The safety issue?? “chill…Its fine…not as bad as it seems”, " Its the same even at so and so university too"…VS… " Its IN the hood kid",“Its downtown, the place you don’t want to be”,“At first I thought the campus was wonderful…but now i wish never came here…am leaving as soon as i can”

and so…
its goes on…
i have found extremes on both sides of every matter of USC…
I, being an overseas student, I cant go to LA to see and know all this by myself.I dont believe more in the rankings than first hand experiences
Also i would like to see how NCSU,UFL or UIC rate against USC.
If anyone can comment on the competitiveness too, i would be very glad…
coz again i have two things …“USC has over 1200 guys in CS department so…its like a rat race”…and “competition in USC is almost nonexistent”…
I would like to goto a college where there is enough competition for me so that i wont be lazy…and not too much of it that i would have to work too hard and go mad one day…

too many questions…
i know…
forgive me…but thats how confusing it actually is…
so i really wish someone …hopefully from USC demystify this…
others are also valued for their suggestions…
but please lets not stray too far from our(maybe my own) main issue-USC
–Confused kid confusing all!! :)