<p>We all know this school's unprecedented rise to academic excellence is extraordinary. USC has the acceptance rates, sats, and gpas that rival some of the very best schools. My question is how is USC seen throughout the country now in 2014? Also what are your predictions for the future of USC in terms of academics within the 5 or so years? Better? Same?</p>
<p>It is difficult to predict how USC will be perceived within 5 years from now. Many events and variables can change things. Right now, there are a handful of schools that are still perceived to be more elite than USC. Generally, they are HYPSM (harvard, yale, princeton, stanford, MIT) plus the rest of the Ivies, Cal Tech, Univ. of Chicago, Northwestern, Wash. Univ. in St.L, Duke and UC Berkeley, possibly John Hopkins. I think UCLA, Univ. of Michigan, Emory, Vanderbilt and Rice are about on par with USC. I don’t want to offend anyone or start an argument, but I might have missed a couple other schools. This is my opinion and I believe is the consensus of a lot of people. </p>
<p>To get into that elite status of HYPSM and the others I mentioned above takes decades and time to erase any negative perceptions. Without offending any Notre Dame people, many people still think of Notre Dame University as a football school, despite the fact the school is ranked slightly above USC in the US News rankings (the ARWU rankings, which weights research, is another tool to consider and is quoted by many elite schools in Wikipedia. Refer to the 2nd featured thread under the USC postings.).</p>
<p>Also refer to my postings: “USC next president must be Pat Haden”, 6/29/14; and “Want to transfer out of USC into a UC (UCB, UCLA or UCSD)”, 8/1/14. These 2 postings have some discussions of what it take to become an elite school in the mold of HYPSM.</p>
<p>Yeah reality lags behind perception. It takes some time for that reality to catch up to how it is perceived</p>
<p>In addition to perception, there are other factors which determine whether USC is in the aforementioned “elite” status. I am repeating myself from my other posts. They are:
- the background and quality of USC’s faculty. Most elite colleges have faculties with PhD’s from elite universities. USC is starting to, at least in the business school, which many of its faculties have PhD’s from MIT, Stanford, etc. Elite faculty professors are members of prestigious organizatons such as the National Academy of Science, etc. Stanford and UC Berkeley have a lot of those type of faculty;
- the number of Nobel Prize Laureates on USC’s faculty. Elite universities generally have much more than the 2 which are USC’s staff (4 if association/affiliation is counted);
- USC placing their own PhD’s students into teaching positions at other elite universities. I don’t believe that is happening with high frequency. Many PhD’s from elite universities, such as HYPSM etc., land teaching positions at other elite schools.</p>
<p>There are other factors such as a large endowment and high research activities. USC apparently has those qualities. However, USC lacks that above mentioned 3. Again, elite reputation takes time to built (decades) and cannot be done in a few years. </p>
<p>^JHU is definitely, not possibly, perceived to be more elite, especially in the east coast. Vandy and Rice are also in the “more elite” category for undergrads. UCLA and UMich are a bit more complicated; they are stronger at the graduate level and UMich has stronger recruiting in the east coast. I do agree that UCLA and USC are perceived evenly for undergrads, especially in California.</p>
<p>Wow you make some really excellent points. I believe an underrated aspect which also contributes to prestige is a school’s athletic program. USC is excellent in virtually every sport. While this is excellent for the fans and really something to be proud of, it overshadows the school’s academic accomplishments. For peers evaluating the school, they often see the school for only its great athletics. HYPSM and the rest are judged just for their academics. It is easy to do this because their sports, while may be important to them, aren’t at a nationwide level of influence. Few exceptions being Stanford recently and Notre Dame.</p>
<p>I can’t speak to nationwide, but certainly in California USC is perceived as a dynamic, rising top 20-25 university on par with Berkeley and UCLA but still behind Stanford and Caltech. But it’s definitely a respected brand name. Along the lines of what UCBUSCalum said above, I usually characterize USC as being a second rung elite school. It’s not on the level of HPYS but clustered right below with schools like Georgetown and Notre Dame.</p>
<p>Agree with all of the above. I would argue that USC is comparable to Emory, ND, Rice, Vandy. Comparing USC to UCLA and Berkeley is not an apples-to-apples comparison.</p>
<p>In 5 years the USC Village will be completed and the fundraising campaign will have been over a year ago. I would assume that the endowment would have reached the $6 billion mark (if not higher) and several star faculty will be hired. Maybe, just maybe, another Nobel winner. USC will probably top out around the top 12 - 20. </p>
<p>I’d put USC above or on par with Cal, which is less diverse than USC and composed mainly of Californians. USC’s brand certainly has accelerated in the past two decades in comparison. USC is likely more on par with the other second tier privates like Vanderbilt, Emory, Notre Dame, Rice, Brown, and Northwestern.</p>
<p>For undergrad admissions and undergrad student quality:
Stanford = Caltech > Cal = UCLA = USC</p>
<p>This is mostly due to the undergraduate size of Cal, UCLA and USC.</p>
<p>For faculty achievement and the reputation of traditional academic graduate programs and graduate admissions:</p>
<p>Stanford = Cal (= Caltech) > UCLA > USC</p>
<p>USC excels in professional programs. </p>
<p>I agree with UCBChemEGrad’s posting above. I also believe that the both Northwestern and Brown are slightly above or more elite than USC and the second tier of private schools SeattleTW mentioned.</p>
<p>‘undergrad student quality’ is not a good term to use considering it implies that some students are inherently better than others (which reminds me, how are you measuring the ‘quality’ of said students?)</p>
<p>How do you measure the quality of an individual?</p>
<p>I think they are similar in stature to schools like Emory, NYU, Rice, Georgetown, Vanderbilt, WUSTL and Notre Dame. The faculty is not as high-profile as the student body, but if you judge schools based on admissions stats and selectivity, USC is pretty strong.</p>
<p>In terms of how good of an education kids receive/quality of faculty… most decent (and better) state schools are competitive with USC. But then, I like the state schools. 
</p>
<p>I think the term “undergrad student quality” is a fair term. You can measure a student by their incoming stats such as gpa, sat, and awards. In that sense, one student can be better than another. However, it is very difficult to measure undergrad students quality by measuring their statistics throughout the 4 years. Some schools deemed more “elite” may have easier courses on average than a respectable school thus skewing the numbers. So, I think you can measure student quality but are limited to using incoming freshmen numbers only.</p>
<p>You can measure what, exactly? How high the curve was at their high school? Inflated GPAs? “Advanced courses” that were more a measure of how well you regurgitate information vs. how good are you at problem solving? 10 point scales vs 7 point scales? How much the teacher liked the student vs. how intelligent the child actually was? The average child who excelled for various reasons vs. the genius status child who did the bare minimum?</p>
<p>Stats are very flawed. The problem with purely quantitative data is that it never tells the entire story. That’s why I hate how colleges mostly measure a student’s readiness for post secondary education by a few numbers that literally tell you nothing.</p>
<p>You guys are talking about student quality, and that contributes to the overall quality of the school, to a limited extent.</p>
<p>But</p>
<p>They all attend to learn. And professors teach.</p>
<p>Thus, a far stronger factor, in my opinion, is the quality of the faculty.</p>
<p>When will usc crack top 20?</p>
<p>^ as soon as USC gets serious about becoming elite and reduces the sizes of the freshmen and transfer classes.</p>
<p>^ i thought student quality is already top notch and what’s holding usc back is the quality of profs. How long does it take to improve on that?</p>
<p>Not so. USC has a sufficiently fine faculty already and what’s holding us back is ourselves. USC’s admit rate should be around 12-15% and with a smaller student body the faculty to student ratio will go down and student satisfaction, endowment per student and graduation rate will increase. Those factors alone will place us comfortably in the top. WUSL did precisely that and succeeded. </p>