<p>Has anyone been to a USC graduation ceremony? Any tips or recommendations would be appreciated! Thanks.</p>
<p>Umm, arrive early. Like real early. If you think parking is bad during USC home football games, then graduation day is really bad.</p>
<p>Otherwise, graduation is really nice. They clean up the campus real good and make it look very pretty for graduation :)</p>
<p>So, just how early???</p>
<p>Went to graduation 2006. It wasn't as bad as we thought. We stayed at The Radisson the night before and saved seats starting at about 6:30am. The rest of the family arrived around 7am and although they planned to park off campus at the Parking Center, there were still spots on campus in PSD. The processional started at 8:30am, ceremony at 9am. It was over at about 10:10am.</p>
<p>Thanks for the info! Anyone else??</p>
<p>Book your hotel EARLY. Many families actually book a full year in advance! The closer you want to be to campus, the earlier you need to book your stay. If you stay downtown, it might be better to just take the DASH down Figueroa instead of driving so that you don't have to deal with the parking hassle.</p>
<p>If any of your family members get bored during the main ceremony, have them go stake out seats at the school ceremony that happens afterwards. In my opinion, the school ceremony is the more important one- it is more personal, it is the one where honors and awards are handed out at. I would think it's better to get good seats for that ceremony than to stay til the very end of the all-school ceremony.</p>
<p>Try to plan everything as much as you can and get all the family members on the same page early on. Your son/daughter/cousin/nephew/whatever is sometimes in a very stressfull time- my thesis was due noon of the day before graduation, I had an exhibit to put up that day, and to coordinate all of my relatives arrivals/pickups/hotels/transportation, and it almost killed me. Any of that sort of stress that you can relieve the graduate of is a gift in itself!</p>
<p>Can anyone recommend a hotel? The Radisson is booked. Thanks very much!</p>
<p>We always stay at the Holiday Inn Media Center in Burbank. My husband loves Burbank, its a nice clean area and you just walk out of the hotel to PF Changs and all kinds of small resturants and shops and there is always a movie being filmed close by, it seems. The hotel is not expensive either. There is free parking. It took us about 20-30 minutes to get to USC. The hotel is right besides the freeway that goes straight to USC. The people who work at the hotel are really nice.</p>
<p>Has anyone been to the Baccalaureate Ceremony and Dinner held the day before graduation? Is that worth attending? Thanks for your input.</p>