“Urbanness” good one!
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Columbia also has gates.
I am at USC often and not sure what you mean about “the wall.” There is not a wall around the campus. Had a couple visits very recently and did not check in with security (and never have walking into campus, except waving/showing phone that we did Trojan check), so that confuses me too. Cars do go through a check in gate of course like most college campuses. There is mostly open style wrought iron fencing with one side that has more of a stone/wall type fence - that’s all about keeping sound down from the train/Metro and busy intersections on the Exposition Blvd side, and yes, it does add to having a secure campus. I like that they can actually close it off if they choose too. They have events and concerts on campus only for students and it’s great they can manage it that way, I prefer that rather than an open campus, whether it’s LA or Indiana. But the Village, for example, is wide open and that is part of campus too (and gorgeous)! If you walk around the entire campus perimeter, you see that most is open view fencing, def not a wall around campus. Perhaps you came in & out on the train/metro side? Once inside campus, borders aren’t really seen that easily. But it is a campus in an urban environment, which these days, in any city, security is a good thing for students and parents.
And if around long enough, some of the USC Marching Band may have broke through as you mentioned, which is always super cool. 
If from the midwest, perhaps the landscape of California felt different? It took me years to adjust to the difference in neighborhoods and landscape. The plants are certainly different here and USC is full of very artistically designed gardens and areas. It is very Disneyland in how well kept, clean and meticulous it is, I certainly get that. As far as parking, I actually thought it was $20, so $14 seems like a bargain. 
There is also lots of metered parking all around campus that is just a couple bucks. One has to pay to park to shop at many shopping centers in Socal, like the famous Grove, frankly, I’m still not use to paying to shop either! I think that has been done on east coast from what I hear, but that still surprises me every time. California (particularly LA and the Bay Area) and USC are certainly very expensive areas to live or attend college in, that’s for sure!
Good luck in the college choice, looking at them all is so much fun and a very special time to have with your future college student! 
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UMass is on my son’s list because W.E.B. Du Bois is the tallest college library.
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Wow. 28 stories!!! (Yes, I had to Google it and scroll through the pictures.)
I bet that library lights up a lot of faces when book lovers gaze up at it!!! Nice.
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Love USC
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… which there are many, and to all four directions, and most of which are open to anyone until whatever hour at night, when some are closed.
But there is no „wall“ (except the outer buildings walls, and or due to grading) and I’ve never felt walled-in.
As I recall, after about 7 pm, all but College Walk and 110th St were closed. Maybe it’s changed but it’s a fabulous place. And now the B-School is a bit up north.
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I hope my post didn’t come off too critical of USC. Walls and fencing aside, I was actually very enchanted—as well as a bit amused—by the campus. It is definitely a LA creation! After all, where else can someone minor in comedy in buildings named after Steven Spielberg and George Lucas? 
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Y’all, lots of colleges have walls, and lots have gates. It’s neither a bad thing, nor a good thing. Chill, please.
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Thanks for the information on your visit. We’re hoping to head West at some point. Maybe stop by Disney before USC for comparison. 
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Not critical at all, just jumped in cause I’ve spent a lot of time there so thought I could clarify some aspects. Like any school, there are definitely positives and negatives! Happy to share both of those.
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That library is impressive. Several other tall buildings on campus as well. One of the few universities that has a skyline 
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I started this thread a long time ago, I haven’t been on in over a year, as my Daughter just graduated college this year. I just pop in to see if it is still going, and liked your post. The whole idea was for people not to list their kids credentials but talk about the vibe of each school, and it seemed to work. My daughter did end up going to the school that moved up on her list, Mount Holyoke College, and it was a 100% success. Your post put a smile on my face.
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Finally my D22 and I have finished our fall visits and I get to contribute to this thread!
I’m going to start by doing a quick throwback to my D18 for the USC commenters - when we visited campus, it quickly moved down, because she found the brick buildings/architecture “inappropriate for southern California.” Perhaps an idea more suited to “silly reasons your kid knocked a school off the list” but there we are…
For my D22, she has applied to, and we visited 6 schools over this past summer/fall:
Moved down: U North Texas - this was her safety school and she was admitted when we visited on a hot late August day, my first mistake. The tour was long, the campus was huge, and my D was over it. She left feeling like, I’ll go here if I have to, but that school is too big.
Moved down: Agnes Scott - this hit me hard, as I love ASC and I thought we had a great visit. She had loved ASC from a distance for a long time, but after the visit she felt like it seemed too city-like for her, she wanted something more rural. Maybe she was just in a bad mood that day. She kept it on her list, but it moved down from it’s previous top position.
Stayed the same: UTulsa - our visit here confirmed that everything we saw about the school online is what the school is actually like. This school not a top choice for her but she liked it enough to apply, nothing about our visit moved the needle.
Stayed the same: Knox College - this was one of her top choices from virtual visits and our actual visit confirmed that. Small school, small town, quirky student body, check, check, check.
Moved up: Hendrix College - this one was sort of a wild card when we went on a summer visit, we didn’t have a lot of expectations going in, but the visit was great. Nice campus, small town, and the real stars, the campus cats. My daughter was completely charmed by the very friendly band of feral cats that live on campus and are cared for by students. These cats were friendlier than her own cat!
Moved up: Cornell College (IA) - this was another wild card added to the list because of their one course at a time approach(we are aware of Colorado, it’s not a fit), she was curious and wanted to check it out. At first, she found tiny Mt Vernon to be a bit too small, but then, after our campus visit found herself completely won over, by I’m not entirely sure what, but she was completely charmed by the school, the students and the small town. The school rocketed to the top of her list.
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It has been a few years since we visited campuses in person but through the years we have visited UCSD, USD, SDSU, UCI, Chapman, LMU, UCLA, USC, Claremont Colleges, UCSB, SLO, UCM, UCD, UCSC, Santa Clara, Stanford and Berkeley. I posted about most of them much earlier in this thread but I’m not sure that I shared our USC experience.
We were not impressed with the USC admission session or general tour. The admission session was generic compared to other schools. My student is a STEM kid and the tour we went on was very focused on cinematic arts and sports and there was a lot of name dropping of big donors and prestigious grads.
My student had just received NMSF and a couple of parents and I stayed after the admission presentation to ask the AO if there was an honors college or what being NMF at USC looked like. The AO said that the only benefit was financial. End of sentence. There was no mention of other honors programs on campus, Thematic Options, research opportunities or ways that top students would thrive at USC. During the tour I asked about McCarthy Honors College (a dorm for scholarship recipients) and the tour guide said that there were talks about making it a regular dorm because all students at USC are honors students. I don’t know where the guide got that info but four years later, McCarthy is the still the freshman honors dorm and Ilium is the sophomore honors dorm.
When it came time to apply, USC had a major my student was interested in so she sent the application anyway. She received an early acceptance and we attended Explore USC to give it a second look. It was a completely different experience. Maybe it was because we had an acceptance in hand but most likely it was because we were in the department that she applied to and the presentations were related to what she wanted to study. She is currently enrolled at USC and there are are many more opportunities, honors programs, progressive degree programs, etc. than I would have ever imagined based on the single AO presentation and campus tour.
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Thanks for the impressions of Cornell College. I think the one course at a time could be good for my sons brain but Im guessing he would find the town too small and too much like home. For him that would be a negative.
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UMass Amherst came into existence around 1955. Before that it was Massachusetts State College. When the state finally decided to build a flagship campus they built an urban campus (with more space between buildings of course) in the middle of the countryside.
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If you are looking for WUE alternatives, he might want to check out UNM or U of Arizona, both of which have reasonable access to outdoor recreation. Aside from the WUE discount, students with strong academic records can do even better through various merit scholarships, honors programs, etc. I know a girl who is studying Chem E at U of AZ and she reports that the new Honors College dorms are amazing.
I also second the comment upthread - Salt Lake City might surprise you regarding its politics and U of Utah is becoming increasingly diverse and drawing students from OOS. Decent merit scholarships too.
Another WUE school that has one of the most beautiful natural settings I’ve ever seen is Western Washington. I know nothing about their engineering offerings though.
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We visited USC and texted my friend’s daughter who is a junior there saying that we were on campus and asked if she could suggest her favorite off-campus hang out spots. We wanted to walk off camps (past the WALL) and get a coffee or find a funky bookstore, basically the area where kids hung out off campus. She texted back that she NEVER leaves campus unless she’s in an Uber and headed elsewhere. That there is nothing just outside the WALL that is safe. Not sure if that’s really true, but…that basically dropped USC down quite a bit off S22’s list. Is anyone else here more familiar with that area? Was she just a more cautious type than most USC students?
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