Diversity at USC

<p>I am consistently reading about rich snobby kids and an overwhelming asian majority. I was wondering what the true student body of USC is like. I am more akin to the residents in the surrounding south central than I am to the supposed students who attend USC, and I am wondering will I fit in at this school? Is the student body extremely disproportionate as far as its asian percentage is concerned? And are there very many latino & black students? I know they are a minority when reading the school demographics but how does that translate to every day on the street. And most of all is the stigma concerning rich spoiled kids true? I am debating between USC and UNC and looking for some advice on the student body. Any help is greatly appreciated.</p>

<p>You should always take what you read online with a grain of salt - Those who are content with it won’t post too much… but those who aren’t happy will post a lot more. So what you are reading all the time might not represent the full picture.</p>

<p>When I visited USC, i didn’t notice any snobby kids or an overwhelming population group - everyone seemed to get along just fine.</p>

<p>You will see rich, snobby kids are either school. But that’s a such a small proportion since USC is so large. You can literally find ANY kind of person at USC (and I’m guessing UNC, for the most part). Now I’ve never actually visited UNC, so I can not comment on them. But USC does have the most international students at any university in the country.</p>

<p>Now for my personal view. There are many kids who do come from affluent families, but there are also many people who come from poorer families. I’ve never seen an issue where someone wouldn’t hang out with someone based on their wealth. After all, we’re all people and money doesn’t define us. Some of my friends have many houses, yachts, etc, but you wouldn’t know that just meeting them as they’re warm, kind individuals. I also am friends with people who found it was cheaper for them to go to USC than the likes of UCLA and Berkeley (instate) due to financial aid! So money is definitely not an issue in terms of people separating into groups based on their wealth.</p>

<p>There are a lot of Asian people at USC, can’t deny that. I have found that a lot of the Asian kids from Asia do tend to hang out with each other. But generally, I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s “overwhelming”. Don’t forget USC is one of the top schools in the country and is located in CA. Of course there will be lots of Asian students, but if you were to compare it to Stanford and the UCs, I would definitely say it is not overwhelming.</p>

<p>To tell you the truth, I would say that there aren’t as many black students as I’d expect. From a university as diverse as USC, I’d have expected more, but there aren’t as many as I thought there would be. But not all black students are athletes, there are a lot that I know who didn’t even play sports in high school, lol! But there ARE a lot of Latino students. Much more than I expected truthfully.</p>

<p>So all in all, there is a lot of diversity at USC so I don’t think you’d have any problems :)</p>

<p>in short, from the times ive visited at USC i see mostly white people.
70 percent white, 20 percent asian, 10 percent other minorities. </p>

<p>the only people that might judge you based on wealth are people in the greek system who are in the TOP house.</p>

<p>USC has official numbers for this sort of thing, if you want to look at percentages</p>

<p>[Freshmen</a> Profile - USC Undergraduate Admission](<a href=“http://www.usc.edu/admission/undergraduate/apply/fresh_profiles.html]Freshmen”>http://www.usc.edu/admission/undergraduate/apply/fresh_profiles.html)</p>

<p>The university prints out the ethnicity of their student body. Keep in mind each semester students are studying abroad, at the Catalina campus and at the medical campus. </p>

<p>SC is one of the most diversified universities in the United States. Caucasians at SC are in the minority. Here are the numbers from the official diversity report of the ENTIRE undergraduate student body.</p>

<p>Numbers are rounded to the nearest percentile…</p>

<p>Hispanic
13%</p>

<p>Native American/American Indian
1%</p>

<p>International
11%</p>

<p>Caucasian/White
44%</p>

<p>Asian/Pacific Islander
23%</p>

<p>Black/African American
6%</p>

<p>Other/Unknown
2%</p>

<p>Here is information from the UCLA website. They do not give percentages. USC has 16000+ undergraduates. UCLA has 26,687 undergraduates.</p>

<p>UCLA Undergraduates…out of 26,687</p>

<p>Hispanic
4103</p>

<p>Native American/American Indian
121</p>

<p>International
1280</p>

<p>Caucasian/White
8879</p>

<p>Asian
10145</p>

<p>Black/African American
986</p>

<p>Unknown/Other
1173</p>

<p>USC is very diverse. From what we have seen and discussions with my son I am impressed with not just the diversity at USC but the progress in this generation of kids in being more “color and religion blind” We are from a small midwest town which is 90+% christian/caucasion. I probably met 30 or so people from my son’s floor between move-in and parent’s weekend. Son’s roommates were a Jewish kid from the east coast and an African American/Philippino from a southern state. One of them is gay. He loved both of them. Two of his best friends on his floor were a girl who is half hawaiian and half japanese and a girl who is half Vietnamese and half German. There was a kid down the hall with a German surname who looks asian and grew up in the middle east. There was a kid across the hall who has a scandinavian surname and looks african/american. There were also an American who grew up in London, a French kid, a fair number of garden variey caucasian and asian kids. A lot of really interesting people. Specifically regarding African/Americans, there was an African/American guy a few doors down the hall who participated in some music fun with my son, and the RA for the floor was African/American plus the kid with the scandinavian surname who I suspect is half African/American but it doesn’t really matter. These kids on this floor got along great and had a great first year as far as I can tell and the facebook photos suggest that they didn’t segregate by ethnicity to any great degree. Some of them just can’t segregate, because they aren’t only one ethnicity. There certainly are times when minority groups choose to self segregate for legitimate reasons and some individuals probably do that a majority of the time. I also am not naive enough to think that there isn’t some racism or prejudice everywhere. The limited view I have into this one small slice of USC was very positive in terms of breadth of diversity and the people who didn’t really place a high degree of importance on their differences. </p>

<p>I probably couldn’t tell who was rich and snobby, but we have a nice middle class lifestyle and all my kids get to learn to be poor when they go to college. My son didn’t have any issues finding good people to hang out with and have fun without spending much money. He probably wouldn’t be drawn to rich snobby kids and probably wouldn’t care what they are doing, so no conflict for him.</p>