<p>GroovyGeek,</p>
<p>Not sure how your post is related to this topic. If you can further your thinking to find some “evidence” to prove your implied points, you may arrive at the level of SAM LEE. I don’t think your questions are well thought, but I am a nice person …</p>
<p>(1) Where did you get USC’s graduating class 3x that of the freshmen class. Did you ever even think about whether that is possible?</p>
<p>(2) Why a NMF finalist mean a high SAT? Who said USC focus on high test score, but what’s wrong with that? What do you know about the 20-30 ranked private colleges, and what do they focus on? I really think the question of yours is naively brought up.</p>
<p>(3) USC knows its position, and the scholarship students are ivy-quality students that help elevate USC’s stature. Again, what do you know about “top-30” and “mid-50”? This becomes funny to me - hearsay and unsubstantial personal perception become facts to you. Please stop pretending to be an expert in something you don’t know. A lot of schools send out free money to get students they could not get, not necessarily in the form of scholarship. Stanford cuts tuition for many of its students. You don’t think they are stupidly generous, do you? They want to get the students who may go to other elite schools. CalTech’s most undergrads are getting some free money. Their dorms are incredibly nice, and incredibly cheap. If UCLA and Berkeley are not cheap, you think they can get top notched students? Every school has their own way of competitiveness. </p>
<p>(4) I vaguely remembered the incident you have a lot of “thoughts” about. First I want to say don’t believe a media report 100%. As far as I’ve known, that is a small department at USC trying to talk to some of UCLA’s faculty privately, but our president stopped it after knowing of it. It is certainly NOT the practice of the school. Plus that was a failed attempt. But from your mouth, it becomes “the scale that USC does”. If you have the ability looking deep into facts, you will find most of USC’s successful recruiting of senior faculty are from a diverse group of schools, and RARELY from UCLA. Instead, UCLA stole a couple of USC’s top professors to resurrect/establish their rundown programs. Frankly speaking, but purely my opinions, USC doesn’t have the appeal to elite professors of UCLA, and most of non-elite UCLA professors are of little use to USC. </p>
<p>Don’t be obsessed with USC. And try to get more facts and give it more thoughts.</p>