<p>I don’t want to be too negative, there are lots of things I LIKE about SC, and no, crime and gangs are really not that much of concerns, but it’s still hard to compare it to Columbia. I didn’t exactly LOVE Columbia either (at least compared to NYU), but the subway is right outside campus and takes you anywhere in NYC you could want to go. On the other hand, the LA rail system MIGHT have been useful, except for the fact that MTA, in their eternal genius, built the blue line over a mile away from those thousands of SC students some of whom I’m sure would have been happy to use it. By the time you take the bus or walk to a Metro Rail station, you would have been better off taking the bus to whereever you were going in the first place, or better yet, driving.</p>
<p>MTA is really good at building rail lines to and from nowhere (Green Line) and lines that go through nowhere (Green Line AND Blue Line) Same deal with the Green Line, the obvious place people want to go between El Segundo and Norwalk is LAX, right? So it would make perfect sense to build the green line directly to LAX right? Wrong, at least, in the MTA’s world. Let’s build it miles away from the airport and make people take a bus, that’s a GREAT idea! Gimme a break MTA, you could have EASILY continued the Green Line down the 105’s right-of-way. They just don’t want to upset the bus unions. Expo line is coming, but not until we’re long gone.</p>
<p>But yeah, even at UCLA I would want a car. The problem is just exacerbated at SC. Now let me say something positive about SC, the engineering department is pretty good. They have a lot of money and they’re #6 for grads according to USNews. (not that USNews is all that reputable of a rag but hey it’s something)</p>