Whats so special about Viterbi?

dt123
Fri, 13 Nov 2009 15:26:24 +0000

Well, I can only report first hand on what happened in my DS’s case. He graduated in four years with a BS in ME and a Minor in Music Performance, and had a great time the whole way through.

He then worked for a year at an engineering job in LA right after graduation, a job obtained in the middle of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. As a single guy used to a student’s cost of living, he made enough in that year to pay off all his student loans and bank an impressive amount beyond that.

He then applied to graduate schools, and turned down fully-funded PhD programs at Princeton, UTexas and Cornell, and an unfunded offer from Stanford, to take a fully-funded program with one of his favorite professors back at USC, where he is now. Fully-funded means all school expenses paid, plus a living expenses stipend, which is common in engineering graduate study (though not at Stanford I guess). Basically it’s a job, with the compensation being the free tuition, free health insurance and the stipend.

So, specifically, the one student’s track record I know of is awesome. What distinguishes USC generally, I suppose, is being top-ranked engineering school, in LA – one of the coolest college locations around, with the amenities of USC, including the sports teams, great arts programs and lively social scene with nice, really attractive members of whichever gender that interests you. So, in a nutshell, world-class engineering, in LA, at USC. To me, that’s an unbeatable combination.

Does that help?