<p>Hey...I just found out about these schools. They look really nice, and I'm trying to found out as much information as I can. So I would love to hear your guy's thoughts and opinions on these schools.</p>
<p>Academics, Athletics, Social Life, Atmosphere, Campus, Location??? What are the positives and negatives of these two schools.</p>
<p>i'm only a junior in High school, but i can tell you a few things about carolina. i live really close to USC, and i know some people that go there. about the athletics, football is pretty big here. no one really expects the team to win, but it's still fun to watch the games and tailgate like it's our job. also, if you come to carolina, you better hate Clemson with a passion. lol</p>
<p>i think the location is okay. it's in columbia, which is a nice city. it's not a huge city, but it's not like a small town. there's an area called five points, which is fun. </p>
<p>the academics at carolina are good, well as good as you're going to get at a state school. they have a great business school.</p>
<p>USC is starting to attract a lot of people in our area. They are very generous with OOS scholarships. Their Capstone scholars program has gotten good reviews from students around here and if you get any scholarship they drop tuition to in state levels. One of D's friends was just accepted as a Junior into the international business program, which only accepts 50 a year and is considered excellent. Columbia is a nice small city and everyone was really friendly when we visited. It is a really large university of large bothers you, but they do try to offer smaller communities of interest.</p>
<p>I assume youve read the threads on these colleges. Heres the link to the C of C threads <a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/forumdisplay.php?f=145%5B/url%5D">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/forumdisplay.php?f=145</a>
Charleston is charming, but fwiw, we visited and my s didn't like it. I was really hoping it would have been a better experience than it was. Its really grown a bit too quickly ( to about 11k students) and seems to have a bit of trouble with its infrastructure. They are building more housing, but still will be able to accomodate only about 30% of students on campus. The Honors class we sat in on was a bit boring (maybe it was a bd day) and they weren't very organized with our visit. it took a few emails and calls to get it set up, and then the admissions people and the honors people didnt communicate well, so the Honors staff person didnt have my s's scheduled appt on her calendar. She did see him, and seemed a bit disinterested (according to him) until she heard his SAT scores. But this was at the end of the day and he'd already had a not so good experience. He also didn't like the large number of required classes, though it sounded like it wouldnt be too hard to be exempt from many of them. Now, all that said, I took the dau of a friend of ours out to lunch when we visited. Shes a transfer student there and LOVES it! It is easy to walk around, the downtown district is charming and has a lot of shops, and the beach is 10' away. Oh, and it is very inexpensive to attend as it is a state school.</p>