What was your reasoning for choosing USD???

BayAreaCAMom
Sun, 19 Apr 2009 22:28:43 +0000

I personally think it is very hard to compare a large UC school with a smaller private school - it is apples and oranges - they are just very different.

FYI - I am a parent of a Freshman at USD and have another child in high school, so have spent quite a bit of time reseaching colleges nation wide the past few years. But, I am not an expert by any stretch.

I think most public, larger universities with Masters and PhD programs and reasearch capabilities are almost always going to be ranked higher than a small or mid size university without a huge grad school population. So, I do think the rankings are very skewed. For example, I believe some said UC Riverside gets ranked higher than USD, but UC Riverside is also on several Princeton Review lists for the worst teachers, and “classroom discussions rare” - they are probably just riding on the coat tails of the UC system in the rankings. So, while there is prestige at a larger research school, it is not the same experience you get at a smaller school, like USD, where there are no TAs, lots of teacher and student interaction, small classes, and a more interactive, personal classroom and academic experience. And when it comes time to write you recommendations to Grad school, good luck finding a teacher who knows you at a UC.

Again, I am not an expert, but I would think that the Philosophy Dept at USd would be very strong - they have the Institute of Peace and Justice - and there are only 2 of them in the country - USD and Notre Dame. The Catholic schools do an excellent job with the whole social justice, ethics area, in general, and USD has a very strong and well known law school, so based on that, I would think the Philosophy Dept would be good there.

USD is very well know and highly thought of in California. I would also say it is pretty well known in the Mid West and some East Coast areas. My daughter at USD has lots of friends from Colorado, Philadelphia, New Jersey, and the mid west. About half the school is from California, and half from out of state - that is the highest out of state percentage of any of the Catholic schools in California.