<p>I understand the term “undergrad student quality.” Without over analyzing it, my son, when evaluating schools, watched who went where from his high school and whether or not he perceived them to have the level of intellectual vitality he was looking for and if he felt the school had that level as well. No stats were involved, his own un-scientific analysis. So maybe it is how much intellectual vitality the students and therefore the school possess, and student quality is just another way to say it. Intellectual vitality of the faculty obviously relevant as well.</p>
<p>Then how come usc performs so poorly on international and graduate school rankings? Isn’t it because the faculty is weaker compared to other schools? I don’t see how acceptance percentage is everything considering berkeley is at rank 20 and dominates international rankings with around a 20% acceptance.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I’ve long thought this was the case. Even when I was going to USC back in the late 80s it felt like the caliber of the students was better than the caliber of the faculty, and I never got the sense anything changed.</p>
<p>It does seem that USC has begun to hit the point of diminishing returns when it comes to improving the quality of undergraduate admissions, and is changing its focus to faculty. I suspect one of the reasons USC is trying so hard to bring in more revenue, both from the endowment drive and from admitting more students, is to be able to afford better faculty.</p>
<p>Who cares about foreign rankings, which are worthless because their publishers:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>know little about how Americans gauge prestige;</p></li>
<li><p>know little about how high school students and parents evaluate the quality of target schools;</p></li>
<li><p>know little about American culture and how students evaluate educational opportunities;</p></li>
<li><p>know nothing about the traditions that attract American students;</p></li>
<li><p>know nothing about American sports and how that affects students’ decision-making processes; and</p></li>
<li><p>are clueless about intercollegiate rivalries that also affect student decision-making. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>With ignorance as their guide, they are left with few metrics other than faculty awards, Nobel laureates, and other stats that ignore the other metrics of the undergraduate experience, such as class size, admission rates, entrance exams, and endowment. </p>
<p>In short, the Chinese and Brits know about as much about Norte Dame, Ol Miss and Bama as most Americans truly know about Shanghai Tech, Manchester U. or Athens U. Their ranking publishers, however, pander to Americans to cash in on our obsession with rankings.</p>
<p>These are just a few reasons why USN&WR is taken more seriously and more relevant to America. </p>
<p>BTW, when DO the rankings come out?</p>
<p>@Seattle,
</p>
<p>The foreign rankings are arguably more objective. They are based more on academics and less on fluff.</p>
<p>Then UC Riverside is more prestigious than Dartmouth…</p>
<p>I also mentioned the graduate rankings by us news and not solely the world rankings. I don’t think the student quality is the one holding the rankings back considering the application stats are already higher than some schools that are ranked higher on the undergrad us news. And yes, the international rankings are definitely pretty flawed.</p>
<p>International rankings have to be taken with a grain of salt for the reasons above mentioned. I think the whole international thing is overrated to begin with. Unless you’re working overseas for a foreign company (very unlikely), I can’t fathom why we should care a great deal about what outsiders think or vice versa.</p>
<p>It’s not simply the quality but rather quantity that is holding USC back. Despite Nikias’ intent on growing our size, all elite schools are small. That’s an indisputable fact.</p>
<p>^ You’re talking about a smaller undergrad for prestige. </p>
<p>Harvard and Columbia have huge graduate student bodies and are very prestigious. </p>
<p>I would argue undergraduate size doesn’t drive academic prestige. Schools like WUStL, Notre Dame, and Vanderbilt are selective for undergrads but don’t really have the strength in faculty and research reputation to push them to the top of the research university elite.
USC is at this level until it increases academic reputation. This takes much longer than becoming selective with undergrads. </p>
<p>I think schools should specialize and avoid the ranking race. </p>
<p>@UCBChemEGrad In the general scheme of things, would you say USC is in the 20-25 range right now? I’ve read a lot of your posts and they all seem to be reasonable/unbiased so I’d like your opinion.</p>
<p>^ Overall, yes, about top 20-25.<br>
But I think it depends on intended major. USC excels in professional programs… Film, accounting, journalism, dentistry, pharmacy…All top notch and higher than top 20-25. </p>
<p>Now, if you’re an English or physics major, I’d say USC isn’t quite Top 20-25.</p>
<p>Only a handful of schools have great breadth and depth. </p>
<p>USC needs to focus on its undergraduate programs to enhance its prestige. Graduate schools cannot substitute for a strong undergraduate reputation. USC’s historical emphasis on its professional schools, for whatever reason, has been misplaced. USC’s more recent investments in its undergraduate profile has paid handsome dividends. Only WUSL has replicated USC’s success and vice versa. </p>
<p>It is my opinion that USC’s undergraduate education is already strong and well regarded. It is the graduate schools that will take USC to elite status. As mentioned before, USC does a fantastic job on maintaining an intimate environment with a large student body. Its 9:1 student to faculty ratio and small class room sizes are better than some of the smaller elite universities. </p>
<p>Per US News (University, US News Ranking, UG Student Population, Student to Faculty Ratio):</p>
<p>University of Southern California, #23, 18316, 9:1
Carnegie Mellon University, #23, 6279, 11:1
Georgetown University, #20, 7552, 11:1
University of Notre Dame, #18, 8475, 11:1
Rice University, #18, 3848, 9:1
*Cornell University, #16, 14261, 9:1
Johns Hopkins University, #12, 6153, 10:1</p>
<p>Overall USC needs to boost its STEM programs. The programs are strong nationally, but they need to be stronger to be able compete with the stiff competition in CA. They also need to have more labs, which they are currently constructing. Also, the law school should strive to be in the Top 14 (I believe this can be achieved). The business school needs to be in the Top 15 (I believe this can be achieved). Most importantly, the medical school needs a significant boost. USC needs to rely less or merge with LA County hospital. USC also needs its own Emergency Room (which it will soon build). Further, what WUSTL has that USC doesn’t is a strong medical school. The medical school is the main source of their prestige. </p>
<p>I agree with UCBChemEGrad regarding hiring the right faculty and and striving for elite status in research. I also agree with Modern Man that USC needs to boost its STEM program and medical school. In addition, other non science, math and engineering programs such as economics, history, english, etc. should be strengthened. Strong USC departments, which start at the graduate levels, increase the chance for Nobel Prize Literates on the faculty and the prestige of a USC PhD. Look at UC Berkeley which is generally strong in all areas at the graduate level (UCSF medical school is really UCB’s medical campus). The undergraduate schools overall at UC Berkeley “piggyback” off the prestige of the graduate departments. A lot of UC Berkeley PhD’s get teaching and research positions at HYPSM and other elite schools. To get to this elite status takes time and maybe decades. USC is moving in this direction in great strides.</p>
<p>Btw, UC Riverside recently opened its medical school in 2013. Its rankings will climb. The question is how rapid and how high?</p>
<p>I agree with most of the above comments, however some people are comparing apples and oranges. On the undergraduate level, USC is pretty much already there - really. The numbers are there, the competitive students are there, etc. Can still get better of course, but the issue now in terms of greater levels of prestige is the overall enterprise of USC, which is much more than just the undergraduate experience. It’s the medical school, the medical center, and graduate programs. In some of the global rankings USC is in the 50s, which is quite respectable but certainly wouldn’t be considered truly elite. By contrast, UCLA generally ranks in the top 10 in a lot of research rankings. Nikias and company are working on that, but as several have said, that takes time.</p>
<p>On the undergrad level, USC is a solid choice, but more so in specific fields. I wouldn’t necessarily choose to go there for anything in the liberal arts or the hard sciences, but you could certainly do a LOT worse. USC’s historic strengths are in the arts and in the professions, which don’t lend themselves well to the research and graduate-focused rankings that are used outside of the U.S. and that’s where the USC’s gap between perception and reality is especially pronounced, but as was the case with the undergrad program, that gap is closing slowly but surely. The $6 billion fundraising campaign, Village at USC, and stem cell programs are all game-changers.</p>
<p>For example, here are some international research-based rankings. USC fares well, but doesn’t have the “wow factor” that programs like the film school (#1 in the world) or the video game design program (#1 in the country) have. It’s not that USC is bad by any stretch of the imagination, but that the university is not in the top 10-25 like it aspires to be.</p>
<p>Times’ Higher Education rankings (UK) - USC is #70
<a href=“World University Rankings 2013-14 | Times Higher Education (THE)”>http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/2013-14/world-ranking</a></p>
<p>Academic Ranking of World Universities (China) - USC is #51
<a href=“http://www.shanghairanking.com/ARWU2014.html”>http://www.shanghairanking.com/ARWU2014.html</a></p>
<p>QS World University Rankings - USC is #125
<a href=“QS World University Rankings 2014: Top Global Universities | Top Universities”>QS World University Rankings 2014: Top Global Universities | Top Universities;
<p>As an alum, I don’t want USC to be #125 in anything (except things like crime rates and student loan default rate) but the point is simply that different schools have different strengths, and USC’s core historical strengths in the arts and in the professions don’t lend themselves to these kinds of international, STEM-focused rankings. This is the kind of thing that holds USC back in its undergrad rankings as well, since school reputation is 22.5% of the U.S. News score, and you can’t simultaneously be, say, #10 in undergrad and rank #125 in anything research-related. These global rankings do also provide an excellent job, however, of demonstrating the research strength of America’s land grant universities, and that’s where a school like UC Riverside can easily outweigh a school like Dartmouth.</p>
<ol>
<li> The top 20’s aren’t going anywhere.</li>
<li> Incoming freshman stats (selectivity, test scores, gpa’s) are “gamed” by limiting the incoming freshman class then filling up the class with community college and transfer students with lower GPA’s and SAT’s.</li>
<li> They must increase the number of students from the US outside of CA. Right now 66% are international students and from CA and only 1/3 are from the rest of the US. This is why many outside of CA, S. Korea and China don’t know about USC.</li>
</ol>
<p>37 percent of last year’s freshman class are from other states and 16 percent are from foreign countries. The only reason Cal and UCLA are so popular in the far east is because of their predominantly Asian student bodies. Cal is the equivalent of Harvard to many Asians, according to many I’ve met. USC is more diverse and needs to shift its focus from the international student body to the out of state students. USC will only crack the top 20 when it gets rid of a senior administration intent on transforming USC into a private version of SUNY Buffalo, Oklahoma, Georgia, SDSU, UCI, or another land grant university. USC is fast losing its private school characteristics. </p>
<p>I wouldn’t consider it to be prestigious. Whatever notion of prestige that USC has is limited exclusively to the Southern California region. Virtually everywhere else in America (NorCal included), it is known for its football/party/rich kid reputation, not for its academics unfortunately. I find a lot of students here to be a bit delusional and provincial in this regard, specifically those who believe that USC has some prevalent elite reputation; a large % of students here are from around SoCal which explains this bias.</p>
<p>Like other people have said, USC needs to drastically reduce its undergrad student body size (likewise with its grad student body- many of the Master’s programs are joke programs whose sole purpose is obviously to increase revenue and result in diluting the value of the USC degree). Along with this, it needs to reduce the number of transfer students it admits, which comprise a ridiculously large percentage of the undergrad population- the vast majority of transfers are from junior colleges and, from my personal observations and interactions with them in classes, are noticeably dumber and less accomplished compared to students who were admitted as freshmen. It needs to also diversify and admit more out of state students</p>
<p>There is a lot of work to do regarding changing the image of the school and attracting top caliber students.The quality of USC students apparently has increased a lot over the years, but it doesn’t even come close to that of many of the elite institutions who you seem to be comparing USC with. USC doesn’t really have an intellectually curious student body, and I’m consistently surprised by how dumb a lot of the students are. Most people here can’t even string a sentence together without saying “like” several times, and many students here have no passion, ambition, or talents, which is a typical characteristic you find among students at truly elite schools. The scholarship students (Presidential, Trustee, etc…) are pretty exceptional though, and this is fortunately one of the bright spots of USC, although it seems many of these smarter/sophisticated students don’t really fit in socially. Also, the school is very segregated/polarized, and the dominance of Greek life on campus detracts a lot of quality students and gives a very moronic vibe to the school.</p>
<p>And for Christ sake, the university needs to purchase large tracts of land around the campus and clear out the surrounding residents. The area around here is awful and the frequent robberies/stabbings/murders are unacceptable.</p>