<p>ucla_fresh,</p>
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<p>to be blunt, none of this matters. at the end of the day, (most) employers aren’t dumb. they’re going to pick the best person a.k.a. the person who can bring in the most money, and even that trumps connections. yes, connections do play a big role, but personal qualities and characteristics are bigger. when you go work or find an internship, you may be surprised by the alma mater of your fellow interns and co-workers, and your boss’ alma mater too.
as for rankings, it’s the USC people who always bring up how they’re at #30, and UCLA people just defend that they’re ranked higher, but (this is my opinion) i don’t think UCLA people initially say “oh we’re ranked higher than you!” since reputation takes a long time to build, a lot of people out there still think UCLA is a really good school and thus its students must be top-notch, and some still think USC is a bad school (think of the nicknames), although this is decreasing as USC improves. but i also contend that the rankings distort the gap between UCLA and USC, which should be a little wider than presented.
but again at the end of the day, none of this matters. </p>
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<p>Some of us also go to college to prepare ourselves for grad school, and UCLA’s numbers to grad school are almost always better than USC’s across many fields. As for life experience, I hope many people who attend UCLA take away the concept that they must take the initiative to do things and to find things in this sink-or-swim environment. A smaller college may baby you and you might think that it’s great everything is given to you, but you’ll be in shock when you enter the real world and realize it’s not like that. </p>
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<p>hey, i won’t deny that. but you know what, making connections means you pursuing them. in comparison to many of the top colleges out there, UCLA’s connections are already really good, though not one of the best. think of UCLA’s connections as “ivy” and USC’s connections as “HYPSM.” trust me, there’s a lot of other colleges out there where connections dont exist at all. my point is, you have to make an effort to build up your network. UCLA’s a great place to do this, but if you don’t try, then no one’s going to come to you. </p>
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<p>for entering into most jobs, GPA means little if anything at all. yup. and once you get hired, GPA means nothing. of course, this complaint is valid regarding grad schools, because they’re the ones that actually care about GPA. but earning a good GPA at UCLA is respected by grad schools, and that’s why UCLA outperforms USC when it comes to grad school placement.</p>