why UCLA keeps dropping in USNews rankings

Corbett
Wed, 18 Aug 2010 17:44:59 +0000

Well what I was getting at is that USC is huge.

For ranking purposes, universities are evaluated based on the stats for the entering freshman class. It’s true that USC is rather large by this measure, with 2,869 entering freshman (stat from collegeboard.com). So USC does face the challenge of maintaining high admissions standards while simultaneously filling a large freshman class. Of course, this challenge is greater still for UCLA and Berkeley, which are even larger.

Nonetheless, USC’s freshman class is not extraordinarily large, even by Ivy standards. Penn had 2,404 freshmen, and Cornell had 3,181.



The only way I imagine USC could rise to the top without having to run over 4 universities for every tier it jumps is if it successfully recruits international students.

You may be right. However, USC may have figured this out too.

According to [US News](http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/national-most-international), USC now ranks near the top, in terms of percentage of international students among the undergraduate student body. It competes strongly with the Ivies, MIT, Stanford, etc. in this regard, and is far ahead of the UCs (which are probably forced to cap international enrollments, since their primary mission is to serve state residents). Some current numbers:

15 % Carnegie Mellon
12 % Caltech
11 % Harvard
10 % Columbia
10 % Penn
10 % Princeton
10 % USC
9 % Yale
9 % MIT
7 % Stanford
5 % Berkeley
5 % UCLA

In terms of the total number of international students (not as a percentage), USC is [number one](JOKER123 daftar link login download alternatif joker388.net).