It’s two year, but I can def say mine would not have wanted to be on campus any longer…they are about 20 at that point, been on their own for one or two years and really don’t want the rules any longer. Limited friends, same food, time restrictions…Two of mine went off after the first year, the dorms are restrictive as they become more adults. But it is easier on parents to not have to help figure out outside housing, I get that. So we never sought 4 year housing as a factor, but totally get some do.
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So max after 2 years, they probably need look for outside apartments with friends. I kind of worry about that area off campus. 
Yup it was first launched in fall 2023 with a cohort of only about 50 students. So very few people would have first-hand experience.
Have you seen this? Sort of a first semester update on the program:
AI for Business Major Kicks Off at Marshall and Viterbi
This is the original announcement for the BUAI joint degree:
USC Marshall Announces New Joint Undergraduate Degree: AI for Business
And this is the structure of the program:
USC Catalogue: Artificial Intelligence for Business (BS)
The other thing I heard from my student is that hundreds of kids wanted to internal-transfer into the program, but Marshall is not taking any…
Berkeley Haas’ new 4-year program sounds much less risky than the former 2-year program, IMHO. Congratulations on two amazing choices. 
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If you can visit both schools, I highly recommend it. They each their own unique feel. My daughter knew immediately that Berkeley was not where she wanted to be when we visited and would not even apply. She will be at USC next year in Marshall/Leventhal for Accounting.
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USC guarantees housing for two years. For the second year, some of the housing is on campus or in the Village, and some of it is in off-campus apartments that the university owns and operates (but still very close to campus).
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Thank you SO MUCH sharing your thoughts! I love reading everything you said, you read our mind 
. USC is her dream school and the new BUAI program sounds super excited. We were a little bit lost when comparing business school ranking yesterday. Now I clear my doubts and I believe she’ll be very happy at USC. We are going to the Admitted Student day in April 
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What is USC like for premed?
We love USC with all of our heart. It is 100% the best place for my daughter and her first year has been everything she has wanted it to be.
All that being said, the food is awful.
She did a summer session at UCLA and the food was SO good. It’s the one thing that I think UCLA truly has a leg up on USC.
I wouldn’t pick based on housing between USC and UCLA. I think the housing at USC is great, especially in the village. UCLA has some forced triples (I don’t know across the board, but the room my daughter stayed at in their newest dorm was a forced triple and VERY tight) But I do think students in general like to live off campus and there are lots of options in both areas. The housing at Berkeley would be a huge negative. It’s always a source of contention in Berkeley.
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I can’t speak to it yet as my daughter interested in medicine is a freshman in high school, but of course she already wants to join her sister at USC, so I’ve looked at it a bit. They seem to have a great pre-health counseling program. You can take a look here:
https://dornsife.usc.edu/pre-health/ and their instagram is pretty inspiring: USC Pre-Health Advisement (@uscprehealth) • Instagram photos and videos
The students know the areas and there are many places close to USC to rent and are very safe. I will say the outside housing was the least favorite part of USC, not because of safety at all, but because some landlords are awful to work with and don’t maintain properties like they should, and there’s some coordination between the kids on the lease and utilities, etc. But the kids have to take the lead with their friends and I will say they all lived in great housing, that in the end worked out well. Gateway was one, a giant townhouse for 9 engineers who are now lifelong friends, an aparment off Adams for 6 of them, the Shrine Apartments and another was at Hoover House directly across from Target and the Village. So there are some rather nice places in very close proximity (steps really) to USC. I’d always stay within the Adams/Vermont/Figueroa/Exposition square and the closer the better. They loved being “in their own place” and it is a good transition/learning curve for them to go through before they graduate. Just more work for parents than checking a preference box on a housing portal though. But it’s the time they can take responsibility and do the legwork.
Thank you for the links and info, it’s super helpful!
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She will love it! It’s an amazing program and school. Welcome to the Trojan Family!!! 
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Thank you @legacymom1 and @browniebutton50 for the encouragement, and congrats on your kids’ amazing outcome!
This is my first, and maybe last, long post on CC. I just want to share our data points to give back to this amazing community. All kids are different and they all have their unique paths and their own ways to thrive in colleges, and life in general. I am sharing mine, to maybe help a few kids that share similar interests and stats as mine.
Twins, both NMS (both 1520/1520), both top 1% or 2% at my local, highly ranked public high school in CT. They didn’t fill nor submit any financial aid request.
Tests include: 10 and 11 APs taken, all in 10 & 11 grades as our school doesn’t allow AP during 9th grade (Lang, Calc BC, Physics C E&M, C Mech, Statistics, CS A, CS P, Macro, Micro, Chem, APUSH) , SAT 1580 & 1600, ACT 36 (all 1 sitting no super-score) DEs include JHU and local community college courses.
Awards include: 5 national hackathon wins at MLH, Modeling the future, ranked #1 a CT/NY regional Lockheed Martin code quest advanced division, NIH Brain Challenge, Fed Challenge.
Leaderships: debate club, coding club, open source non-profit.
Goals: One is interested in Ed Tech and the other is healthcare tech. They either applied to CS+Business (if school offers this combined degree), CS (if transfer in is limited) or business (with the intention to double major in CS, if there is a good undergraduate business school)
Results:
The twin had the same results except 3 schools (listed under Mixed)
Accepted:
- UPenn (ED deferred, RD accepted) Their older brother is currently a sophomore at Penn.
- CMU (admit tour next week, concern is the stress, especially for CS major)
- WashU. Langsdorf scholars full merit scholarship. (Kids just did their all-paid-for 3-day scholar tour, kids fell in love w/ the people and campus. 2 minor issues: not a strong CS program although the career outcome is good, and bit far from home)
- UMich. CS admit. (love everything! minor concern: north & central campus distance makes CS+business harder to dm)
- Georgia Tech. ECE. (admit tour, kids love the vibe and geeky but cheerful peers)
- Northeastern. EA admit. Honors Program $27,000/year (prospective tour, love the location, honor dorm & coop!)
- UMD. CS admit. President’s Award $12,500/year (prospective tour, kids loved like the campus, their crazily good CS program, being able to take Amtrak home is a plus)
- UMass Amherst. CS admit, Honors College, Chancellor’s Award $16,000/year (love their CS program and #1 food!)
- Penn State. CS admit. Applied rolling, got in 1st wave in mid-Nov. (love their CS building, engineering program, campus and town)
Wait-listed:
- Cornell Dyson (official campus visit)
- Columbia Engineering (mom legacy)
- JHU (official campus visit, summer courses)
- UChicago
- Vanderbilt (official campus visit + regional AO visit)
Rejects:
- USC (EA deferred then reject)
Mixed:
- NYU Stern (twin 1 wait-listed, twin 2 accepted, double legacy)
- Yale (twin 1 wait-listed, twin 2 rejected, summer YYGS)
- Duke (twin 1 rejected, twin 2 wait-listed)
Takeaways:
- Do a rolling admit at a school you like, for us it’s Penn State. The wait would have been much more painful for us without knowing you can attend a school you like
- They absolutely would love to go to any school they applied to, each of them have the pros and cons. Public schools is more restrict in changing majors, but generous AP policies means they can graduate in 2-3 years. Some schools have good food, good vibe, good people, and some are close to home or job markets.
- Wait-list and rejection, while making perfect business sense for schools, do not reflect, in any ways, your characters and strength. Twins each got 2 rejections, and the common one is USC. USC is an amazing school but probably not the lowest admit rate one, so you can see how random this process is.
- Their demographics and academic interests (Asian, male, affluent zip code, upper middle class, CS/business major) are the most highly impacted, so we applied to 18 schools (not a fan of applying to many schools but I felt we had no choice.) In hindsight, we could have reduced a few, but the truth is, they got waitlisted by almost all their reach schools, so to get into a “reach” school, you might have to apply to the same amount of schools. Not suer there is a solution for this craziness.
Best of luck to you all and God bless! DM me if you have questions, I am happy to answer!
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Thank you so much for all those info. We will attend the open house on both schools and hopefully he can make his best decision.
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Have you narrowed it down to just these three?
My personal opinion is that Berkeley housing is run down and crowded. They have 3-4 people per room and are using previous student lounges as temporary quads. The school is very bureaucratic so, if things break, it is difficult to get them fixed. Food is not great. They’ve tried to address that by allowing students to use their flex dollars on GrubHub. Many students who would have never considered Greek life, join a fraternity or sorority in order to secure housing close to campus.
The Hill at UCLA is well designed. Majority of rooms are triples. Food is highly rated. Four years of guaranteed housing is great, and gives parents a sense of security. However, if you talk to UCLA students, many don’t stay in the dorms after one or two years. They want their independence and choose to move into an apartment or their sorority/fraternity house.
USC guarantees two years of housing. Majority of rooms are doubles. Food is good, but students grow tired of it. Just like UCLA, many students want their independence so, after a year or two, move off campus.
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Thank you for all the insights. Would you happen to know if there is a group for all admitted students parents. My son got admitted for this Cycle at USC.
Would love to connect with other people and also find out more about room mate matching.
The USC Parents Group is is a FB group moderated by USC.
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Yes, we narrow down to UCLA or USC at this point.
We did the campus tour Tuesday to see the UCLA tripled dorm room, yes, it is kind of tiny. We were advised the room assignment is random by system even we can put our preferences.
We also signed up the USC McCarthy Honor Residential College, and will check it out on 4/7 open house.
Besides, we need compare majors and courses etc. Let us see.
Thank you so much for the advice.
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Statistics and Data Science at UCLA, right? What major at USC?
Applied and computational math, declare data science Spring 2025, kind of double major in data science.
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