Just to reassure everyone, we have no bias against USC.
The “ranking rigging” article that cited USC was featured because rankings (for whatever reason) are extremely popular topics of discussion at CC. I’m personally dubious about the value of rankings, but our members really do like to discuss them. That a prominent college would get taken to task in the press about questionable data that happen to boost rankings is newsworthy.
There have been past discussions about schools that reject or waitlist “overqualified” applicants to boost their apparent selectivity - search the forums for “Tufts effect.” It’s been quite rare for a college to get taken to task publicly for ranking rigging, though.
Note that our members can have an impact on what ends up on the home page (or featured at the top of each forum). Just use “Recommend this thread” in the Thread Tools dropdown, and it will call the thread to the attention of our moderators and admins who can feature it. Be sure to include a line as to why you think the thread merits featuring, that will help us out.
USC is a phenomenal school, and I have recommended it often (particularly for communications).