UCLA admits USC has the BETTER campus

DJS3CA · April 23, 2009, 1:29pm

[The</a> Daily Bruin - USC?s campus is familiar, yet so different](<a href=“http://www.dailybruin.ucla.edu/stories/2009/apr/23/iuscs-campus-familiar-yet-so-different-i/]The”>http://www.dailybruin.ucla.edu/stories/2009/apr/23/iuscs-campus-familiar-yet-so-different-i/)

USCs campus is familiar, yet so different

<pre><code>* By Jenae Cohn

Updated: Thursday, April 23, 2009 at 12:01 a.m.
Published: Thursday, April 23, 2009
</code></pre>

I discovered a portal to an alternate universe, and it goes by three blood-red rivalry letters: USC.

Exploring USC felt like a covert mission to both discover hidden rivalry secrets and to reveal a window into a university life I could have had but chose not to live.

A little context: My senior year of high school, I swore to myself that I would never visit another college campus for fun ever again. I grew unbearably weary of the perky, blond student tour guides who walked backward out of their flip-flops, the groups of parents asking about coed bathrooms while clutching maps and meal plan brochures, and, perhaps more than anything else, the overwhelming challenge of deciding which school I would best fit into.

Of course, I saw the necessity of visiting college campuses prior to making any final decisions. After all, only by visiting a school can one truly understand what it will be like to live there. It was only after I visited UCLA that I realized how much more I enjoyed busy, bustling, urban campus life as opposed to an isolated, rural college experience.

So, two and a half years after that stressful year of crucial decision-making, I finally feel as if I have the perspective to visit the infamous university on the other side of town.

I couldnt help but be curious about it. From first year, I was indoctrinated into a world of blind anti-USC fury.

I remember going home my first winter break from college and cracking a USC joke to my older sister, who then crinkled her nose, scoffed and proclaimed the utter stupidity of college rivalries.

I, of course, grew defensive. What did she know about those scumbag, spoiled, good-for-nothing USC students anyway? She had never bled the blue and gold of a true Bruin!

Of course, this stance from an older sister can shake your foundational thinking about the world. Even when you tell her that shell never understand what such a rivalry is like, you or maybe its just little, pushover me cant help but worry if shes right.

Once my sister also floated the notion through my head that USC was actually a pretty OK school, I couldnt help but wonder what exactly made it pretty OK.

Hence, it seemed far past due for a visit to UCLAs favorite foes campus to truly discover the school I only knew as a rival and nothing more.

What struck me most about stepping onto USCs campus was how separate it felt from the city around it.

There are no tall fences or barriers on the edges of the campus, but one step forward on the intersection of Jefferson Boulevard and McClintock Avenue made it completely clear that I wasnt just in Los Angeles anymore: I was at the University of Southern California in all of its brick-building-and-fountain glory.

On a Saturday afternoon, the campus really didnt feel all that different from UCLA. Backpacked students wearing their USC T-shirts slumped into the library while a giant charity event at USCs recreation center, the Lyon Center, played loud music for a crowd.

A baseball game roared in the stadium just beyond their football field something UCLA still does not have and near the residence halls, students departed with iced coffees from Trojan Grounds, the equivalent of Bruin Café.

With crumpled map in hand, I explored the area only to find that, despite the similarities to UCLA, the whole campus felt completely counterintuitive.

First, there are no hills. Not even the slightest incline graces the campus.

After trekking up Bruin Walk, this flatness somehow made absolutely no sense to me.

Second, the campus academic buildings are not divided into logical North and South campuses like UCLA.

The Roski School of Fine Arts sits across the street from the Science & Engineering Library in the Seaver Science Center. Not that these differences matter a great deal, but after becoming so acclimated to the way our campus looks and feels, these differences felt disorienting.

As I walked near the residence halls, I first noticed the library and then noticed the clusters of girls in bikinis tanning on the lawn directly outside the library.

Sure, Janss Steps attracts sleeping sunbathers, but I thought bikinis were reserved for Sunset Canyon Recreation Center and, well, the pool.

Never before had the phrase college bubble seemed so applicable.

UCLA may seem a separate entity from the rest of Los Angeles, but UCLAs fluid integration into Westwood Village and the campus intrinsically urban feel makes the bubble seem a little less thick.

Sure, we have our brick buildings and our gardens, but USC has Grecian-style courtyards, manicured flowered lawns and a flat landscape that creates a breathy, airy openness completely unlike UCLA. UCLA may be a city in and of itself, but USC is an isolated fantasy village.

In a way, I envied USCs inescapable isolation from the outside community because it harbored a true sense of campus community.

However, on my trip home, I knew that at UCLA, I valued our proximity to Westwood and our vibrant city campus. Westwood certainly isnt downtown, but it isnt Disneyland either.

Im sure I could have been happy at USC just as a number of UCLA students could be happy there, believe it or not but there is no place like home and the campus youve grown to love.

moss · April 23, 2009, 1:47pm

checkmate.

usc girls are so pretty :D

DJS3CA · April 23, 2009, 3:52pm

This is an article that was removed from the Daily Bruin because it created so much controversy.

Luckily, I posted it on another site and I am able to copy and paste it on here.

UCLA can learn from USCs path to prestige
Crosstown school has become a top-tier university, emphasizing classes that are useful in the real world

<ul>
<li>Michael Bromberg, Columnist (Contact)</li>
<li>Published: Monday, January 26, 2009</li>
</ul>

Yes, more people apply to UCLA than any other school in the nation. And yes, it is a highly prestigious, highly competitive university with a beautiful campus. That said, the administrators at UCLA need to strive to improve it by all means. And as crazy as it may seem, in doing so they can take a few pointers from our crosstown rivals.

Now, I hate the USC Trojans as much as the next Bruin from their pompous scarlet attitude to their greedy yellow personalities. That said, it is hard to argue with successful results, and frankly, they have had them. Over the last twenty years, USC has risen up the collegiate academic rankings from a third-rate institution for troubled rich kids to a gasp respected university that is only two spots behind UCLA in the U.S. News and World Report list of top colleges.

While some may argue this is solely due to the fact that USCs endowment fund is more than three times that of UCLA, the truth is that the Trojans have always had wealthy alumni, with even wealthier parents of alumni. In reality, their ascent up the collegiate rankings is derived from a structural approach that is vastly different, and in many ways more practical, than the expansive liberal arts mentality we have here.

For example, students can only get into the UCLA film school their junior year, with an acceptance rate that is often below 10 percent. In comparison, the more prestigious SC film school accepts students straight out of high school, with an acceptance rate of around 20 percent. For being the lesser of the two famous Los Angeles film schools, one would think that the UCLA film school wouldnt be the more exclusive. Additionally, at SC there is far less attention put on General Education requirements and more allowance for students to take required film classes as early as freshman year.

Likewise, UCLA has no real undergraduate business department, with the only management-oriented major available being Business Economics where more of the focus is on economics. Conversely, USC along with several universities around the nation offers a business degree from a business department.

Nick Pezeshki, a second-year business student at USC, said, Coming out of high school, I could have gone to UCLA or USC. But knowing I didnt have the money for graduate school, the idea of graduation from an actual school of business with a major in business allured me to SC. I dont want to waste time with non-practical classes. Taking courses as soon as freshman year in real-world subjects like entrepreneurship, marketing, management and finance gives a great advantage when applying to jobs and internships, over students who have simply taken some econ classes. Though USC is often given an arrogant reputation, its courses prove to be more practical.

Taking classes with the same students for four years allows me to build a good network that I think will ultimately help me get a job as soon as I graduate, which is clearly any students main goal, Pezeshki added. There is a far greater need in the working world for businessmen than economics-men. UCLA needs to start making the necessary adjustments.

In upholding a strict liberal-arts philosophy, UCLA has lost sight of the fact that a main point in higher learning is to give students practical skills they can use in their careers after college. With no majors offered in journalism or advertising, UCLA students have no way of learning skills applicable to several real-world fields.

Being successful in this world has become more and more competitive, and for many UCLA College students, life after college offers no employment better than their summer jobs. Prospective competitive students are catching on to this fact and it ultimately detracts from the university as a whole, with students who are looking for real-world knowledge opting to go elsewhere.

To be fair, there is a method to UCLAs economics-based philosophy. Visiting economics Professor Bruce Brown said, Undergraduate economics majors are statistically shown to get their MBAs more often than undergraduate business majors. And with an MBA, larger income is generally reflected.

Essentially, the Business Economics majors only purpose is to get students ready for graduate school. And this method in no way encourages or teaches students looking into starting their own business.

Alas, while USC is a private school not even half the size of UCLA, the school has done well by allowing students to focus less on GEs and more on their respective majors. Because of this approach, it has made itself a more desirable and competitive university.

Seeing that I am a Bruin, and that the idea of USC ever being ahead in any rankings disgusts me, I respectfully ask that the College administrators take notice and start making our curriculum more applicable to the real world.

moss · April 23, 2009, 4:14pm

I can guarantee you that if all of the USC references were pulled out of the article, most bruins would most likely have acknowledged the problem and supported the proposal for change.

With that said, I feel that the controversy is an indicator of the complacent attitude of ucla’s administration and student body.

ruskie · April 23, 2009, 9:30pm

USC will probably be ranked higher than LA in a few years.

Taxi1113 · April 23, 2009, 10:15pm

Agree with ruskie. Also, the article does a good job of explaining why USC is superior school if you want to study film or business. That’s what attracted me to USC. I wanted an actual business school that had a degree that carried weight on the west coast. The only legit choices are Cal and USC. Easy choice.

Columbia_Student · April 23, 2009, 10:36pm

It depends on how fast UCLA drops and not so much how fast USC rises in the rankings . Take the MBA program, UCLA MBA program drops from 11 to 14 while USC MBA program inches up from 21 to 20. In a few years the two shall meet in the middle.

DJS3CA · April 25, 2009, 10:30am

Columbia, but UG is completely different than the grad school rankings. USC’s undergrad rankings is sky rocketing, while UCLA is stagnate.

The budget cuts should make things interesting.

UCLA admits USC has the BETTER campus

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