Hello everyone, first of all, thanks for reading this
I am between USC and Emory as a top choice I want to know WHY USC or WHY Emory
help me plsss!!!
Does cost matter to you?
Have you been accepted to both? If so, for starting when and what sort of offers did you get?
If not, then apply to both and see what happens.
There is no right or wrong answer here. You have to figure out which is a better fit for what you want in a university. They are both very good.
There is no way that anyone can give you a reasonable answer without a LOT more information.
@auntbea no it does not matter
@DadTwoGirls I haven’t been accepted yet but I will apply as a transfer I have a GPA of 4.0 really good letter of recommendations, extracurricular activities, part of the student government and so on. I am international and I have double legacy on Emory
Emory is a very good institution with a focus on academics - no big sports focus - USC is more concerned with imitating big state schools with big sports programs. I would say Emory - no question.
Determine the criteria that is important to you - size of school, location - both part of the country and urban versus rural, big spirit school/athletics, having football/teams to follow the rest of your life, and whether that matters at all to you, whether a school has your major, strength of that program, peer/social groups at the school, etc. When you are further in the process you won’t have to ask a question like this between two very different schools, because you will have priorities you are looking for. As time moves on and you visit more schools, you will know what you like and don’t like. People on the internet can’t really answer this for you. We all have our own biases based on our experiences, which are totally irrelevant to you and your decision. The fact you are legacy at Emory would be influential I would think.
Both are good schools, Emory is a bit easier to get into at 25.2% versus 16% for USC. You can get a great education at either school. Not a problem until you are admitted. Plan on applying and use this time to research these and other schools more. There is a super active and helpful USC transfer thread. Good luck!
As CADreamin notes, - “big spirit school/athletics, having football/teams to follow the rest of your life.” Is this really important to you? Our experience is that this is an overwhelming focus of the USC school admin. If you want this, then go to Michigan or a similar State institution with excellent academics - you will save tons of money even at out of state tuition prices, USC has significant extra costs on top of already sky high tuition and housing costs,.
Ok. You (or your parents) are about to spend 150k or so in 2 years. So, if I were you I’d do a bit of due diligence.
Both schools have similar level students, similar “rankings,” similar admit stats, and similar quality reps.
At this point, as a transfer student, you should have some sense of what you might want to pursue. And if the obvious and big differences between Atlanta and LA aren’t clear-cut enough to tell you where you want to be, the differences in the programs might.
“Emory” or “USC” are huge institutions. The different programs and schools have different strengths and weaknesses that should matter to a transfer student.
What are you studing?
Are you looking at a specific college/school inside the University?
Are you interested in grad school?
A progressive masters?
Have you checked to see what kind of requirements you will need to hit to graduate (USC has GEs for instance, Emory has GERs. How many transfer credits (if any) will fullfill these required courses?)
Where do you want to end up after college? (If in the West, esp CA, USC is an obvious choice, if south east or even east coast in general, Emory becomes more attractive.)
Both are excellent schools doing serious, significant academic work in a large number of areas. I would really do a deep dive on the programs you want to study, what classes you need to take in the next 2 - 3 years etc. That should tell you a lot. Who cares about the quality of a school’s Cinema Arts or Material Sciences courses if you’ll never take a single media class or engineering class in your time there?
What are you going to take? Who teaches it? Are you excited to study with them?
Both of my daughters chose USC over Emory and also over all of the other colleges that admitted them. More importantly, each of my daughters are extremely happy with their decisions as current USC students.
Their collective reasons (exclusive to their personal opinions)…
USC is a much bigger university but still private, USC offers more major/minor options, USC offers more internship / future employment opportunities, USC offers more student organizations/clubs, USC offers a more traditional college/university atmosphere - including what they perceived to be a better campus vibe, greek / social life, etc., USC offers top-tier collegiate athletics, USC offers greater school spirit / pride, USC offers superior rankings related to their chosen majors/programs, USC offers greater rankings related to the quality of student life (in fact, according to the Niche College Rankings, USC ranks #1 overall among all U.S. colleges in this important aspect), USC offered what they saw as a better campus environment - with superior facilities (especially for their chosen majors), USC offers what they saw as a preferable city / environment location, USC offers a much greater alumni network globally (which is super important after graduation), USC offers a much greater endowment and has shown superior spending on new infrastructure / improvements, USC offers a quality administration & faculty & they are just very good at all things important to students and parents in terms of communication, financial aid, online functionality, ease of access, etc. (i.e. - how they operate overall as a university), USC offers by far superior weather (we live in FL and hate the heat/humidity that is also prevalent in Atlanta and the southeast) & USC simply provided the best overall positive impact after they visited each school in-person.
In reality, despite both schools being deemed elite or Top-25, Emory and USC are very different and in many distinct ways. It should therefore be rather easy to choose between them once you decide on what factors may be most important to you… and especially after visiting each site in-person and actually researching the two schools thoroughly.
Good luck with your decision if admitted to each. Both schools are excellent, but each offers a very different college experience overall.
@dblgraddad I see your student had issues getting football tickets because she didn’t buy the student season pass offered super cheap (zillion emails sent about them) and understand how in demand they are. And this year is such a great year for them! It’s LA - besides the students, USC football is huge throughout socal - it is a sports town like many college locations are. But there are always tickets available from students that buy the passes and don’t use them, they just have to look into things and network. Most students just give them away. One of mine only used a ticket or two all season, others went to every game. Having had many college students, what I found is that they always do better at a school where they are willing to make things happen. Just like Stanford, Notre Dame and other big private schools that love their football, walking to the coliseum/stadium on game day is an amazing experience whether you like football or not - USC is a school of great pride which is what makes it even more amazing to attend. Sorry to sidetrack OP!
^^^ Indeed @CADREAMIN I too read all of his posts. His status as a new member and the general anti-USC rhetoric and tone on a # of threads also surprised me, so I was searching for a potential root cause.
At every college and university, there will be buyer’s remorse on the part of some incoming freshman. Some are homesick or simply have trouble adjusting. Personally, I have found that USC does its best to counter such. USC communicates daily via email with its students and on a scale that really shifts the burden to the student if they simply choose to ignore messages or choose to not take advantage of all of the opportunities and resources in front on them, including advisement, counseling, RAs, etc. As for the football ticket issue, I counted at least five opportunities for my freshman daughter to acquire a season pass for football if she wanted one this year, dating back to July. They email you and then remind you and remind you and remind you, etc. If any freshman then chooses to pass on such an opportunity, you really do not need to blame the school. Plus… as cadreamin also states, there are also many ways to still get tickets even if you do not acquire the student season pass… and often such tickets are available at a reduction or even free.
Anyone, including an USC student or USC parent or just a disinterested bystander, has every right to bash USC on various threads if they choose to do so & for whatever reason they choose, but as an USC parent now, I suggest that any new USC parent may want to give it a little more time and then base such angst (if justified) on something a little more significant than not wanting to pay for football tickets as a student or forgetting to buy them when they were cheaper or first available.
During the last four years, there have been a few minor annoying things that we have dealt with regarding USC, but nothing really comes to mind that was worth mentioning online here on CC. And the good has outweighed the bad by a ratio of like 50 to 1.
To any new USC parent with a child not yet excited about attending USC, let’s see how your son or daughter feels about USC in a year or so. Here’s hoping that their experience eventually mirrors those of my kids and cadreamin’s kids over time. USC is a great school, but ultimately it is what each new student chooses to make out of it.
Best Wishes…
While I don’t disagree with WWWard’s first post, both CADreamin and WWWard’s second posts oversimplify and miss the point of those earlier posts, which were not just complaining about not getting season tickets (which were actually still available the next week - just blacked out that gameday) but pointed to the $200 ticket charge and game day blackout as indications of a school that puts the business of its football program as paramount. In our view school sports should be about the students and the fact that tickets are highly sought after by the public should have nothing to do with making them available to current students - many private schools do so for free - such as Tulane - which was the school that as being discussed in that previous post. The public isn’t attending the school at $60K+ tuition and then being charged on top of that for tickets in a student section that excludes the public anyway. Likewise, the point was the dominating nature of the football obsession at USC and the similar dominance of USC social life by Greek life. I fully admit to being one of those who object to college sports programs that function primarily as a professional-sports feeder business. I also object to a Greek program that fractures the incoming Freshman class by conducting rush even before the first week of classes. In my view, permitting the Greek system to do so is abdicating what I see as the school’s obligation to foster a student community, rather than cede that role in a significant manner to the Greek organizations. Many if not most private schools appropriately restrict rush to second semester for that reason. While both responding posts point out the virtues of the large school-big sports program format at USC, I have seen posts elsewhere on this site disparaging USC as a regional school with a reputation based primarily on its football obsession to the exclusion of academics, not to mention its reputation as the “University of Spoiled Children.” Unfortunately, despite the school’s strides to improve the academic standing of the school, the traits that gave rise to that reputation seem still apparent. As the responding posters point out, some people prize these attributes. My post here merely points out that the same experience and education can be had at the better large state schools for less money.
…nvm 
Sorry CADreamin - I know you have had 4 attend USC and are a big promoter of the school on this site… While mine has only been there a few months, I base my opinion in part on comparing it to the experience of our other child at a different non-Cali school - also a top 20 national university. While USC is no doubt a fine academic institution, the way student life is handled by these different schools has been night and day experience. I really hope the experience at USC improves. Emory - like most private schools - has a FAR smaller undergraduate population and, unusual even for private schools, no football program. It also has a robust Greek life. By contrast, USC has many of the attributes of a big state school, including the student population, but operates at far greater cost than comparably sized state schools. I was not personally calling USC by the derogatory moniker I noted above, but was pointing out that many people still see it that way. (especially Stanford and UCLA grads (smile)). USC’s meteoric rise in standing outside California has been relatively recent and its reputation appears to have not quite caught up yet in some places, like the East Coast. Many people’s only remark when we revealed our child was attending was about USC football. I would have thought this was just an unfair stereotype, but even the USC Class of 2021 Parents Facebook page is dominated by posts about football. Your own post above that I responded to raises it. With regard to Greek life at USC, recent articles in US News (11/9/2016) and even the Daily Trojan (1/19/2016) point out the significantly above average cost of participating in USC Greek organizations (1800-2500 a semester). Compare that to Emory (680-750). .The Daily Trojan article notes that this creates a barrier to participation for many student and decreases diversity in the Greek system at USC which reinforces the appearance that full participation in school sanctioned Greek social life is difficult for many students and available primarily for the well-off students. This is not an issue I am alone in raising.
Every school has its issues, but I do understand that if a child is struggling at a school it is very difficult for the parent to see anything good about that school. The biggest thing that I have learned by having several go through college is that student life at a school is 99% determined by the student, not the school. Whether big or small, football, greek or none of that, how well a student does at any school is up to how the student takes advantage of what is offered at that particular school. I also believe how a student responds to challenges at a school - when things don’t work out well - determines how the four years go and a lot of times how they adjust later in life. Greek life has never been relevant to our family so I don’t know about any issues with it, it is not a significant part of life for the majority of SC students with only 20 something percent participating. But if important to your student and there are issues, I understand the frustration of not being able to fix it.
I do understand that old timers see USC a certain way and it is hard to change people’s opinion. The spoiled children line is passé and as old as the hills - if people use it, it shows me how out of touch they are, but I get it. If they are not there now they don’t know better.
I’m truly sorry it isn’t working out for your family. With my first at USC, I had a total love/hate thing going with the school for reasons other than yours. But it was my student’s experience, not mine. They have always been happy there. I do think if it is as bad for her as it seems for you, or you are going to feel like she is attending a lesser school and will pass on that vibe to her, perhaps transferring is a good way to go. I hope it gets better. And if we can help you navigate anything there just ask.
^^^ I echo these sentiments above. And in my daughters’ cases, neither of them care that much about sports in general and neither of them are active in Greek life. So all of their positive impressions of USC & all that it has to offer them has nothing to do with USC’s athletics or “The Row”. There is a great deal more to USC & the Trojan Nation than just that. It is up to each individual student to craft their own USC experience. Ultimately, it may not be the best fit for everyone. If you are at USC or anywhere for that matter and truly do not feel that the fit is right for you, I recommend exploring other options. You only get to experience college once… so you should find that right place for you.
From this new article…
http://news.usc.edu/128521/usc-ranks-no-15-nationally-in-journaltimes-higher-education-survey/
“USC ranks No. 15 nationally in the second annual Wall Street Journal/Times Higher Education survey of more than 1,000 U.S. colleges and universities released this week. Among all California institutions — public and private — only USC, Caltech and Stanford University ranked within the top 20. Of 150 universities surveyed in the western U.S., USC ranks No. 3.”
This correlates exactly with how all of my east coast peers see things. Of course, everyone has a different sphere of influence.
FYI, next school year, freshmen won’t be allowed to rush in the fall. And they’ll be eligible to rush in the spring only if they completed at least 12 units and achieved at least a 2.5 GPA.