<p>Waiting on a couple of other schools.</p>
<p>Applied 'Undecided' to all, but considering majoring in either Economics or Psychology.
Any advice to which has the best academic reputation out of these? Graduate prospects? Best quality of life for students? Anyone have to make a similar choice??</p>
<p>Thanks!</p>
<p>All five will give you the opportunity for a great education. I’m not going to get into a prestige discussion since I find them pointless and they eventually all devolve into a screaming contest. The differences among your schools prestige-wise is minimal and subject to personal biases and misinformation. The only thing I can think to say that separates any of your five is that UCSD always impressed me as a place emphasizing “hard sciences”. But that may just be my bias. </p>
<p>As for quality of student life, that’s really up to you to decide what kind of college experience you want. At UCLA, Michigan and USC you’re going to have the traditional big time campus/football scene. At NYU you’ll have no real campus but New York City will be at your front door. UCSD has a nice campus and the ocean. Michigan and NYU will get cold in the winter. UCLA, USC and NYU are in major cities with all the advantages and disadvantages that go with them. Ann Arbor Michigan is one of the great college towns in America. </p>
<p>I would suggest thinking about where you might want to work after graduation (if you decide against grad school). Alumni networks and career centers have their greatest pull locally. It doesn’t mean you can’t get a job in NYC with a USC Econ degree, it just means that the NYU grad is going to have more connections to tap into. Performing well at any of the five will give you a chance at the type of grad schools your hoping for.</p>
<p>Congratulations on your choices. Good luck.</p>
<p>They’re all top 10 for Psych except for USC and NYU (makes sense, these two are pre-pro schools primarily, not research institutions).
They’re all top 20 for Econ except for USC – UCLA has the highest rank of the five in econ.</p>
<p>With the exception of USC, they’re all academic peers in your two areas. Your decision should then be governed by more differentiating factors such as east coast/midwest/west coast, by weather, by the feel of the campus, by the size of the campus, and by whether you like big time sports (in which case NYU and UCSD would be out).</p>
<p>Actually Dunnin, according to the latest Econ rankings, Michigan and NYU were tied at #12 and UCLA and UCSD were tied are #14. USC What not ranked among the top 30.</p>
<p>Alexandre wrote:</p>
<h2>“USC was not ranked among the top 30”</h2>
<p>True, it never is unless its one of the trade degrees (Business, Engineering, Film/TV) I just don’t know why true academic departments just don’t get the ranking love at USC :)</p>
<p>^^^^Perhaps they’re just not great in “true academic departments?”</p>