<p>Agree with just about everything you say except I’d have to say USC is very safe as compared to Chicago, Penn, Columbia, NYU, Yale and other urban private universities, per Clery Act statistics. My biggest gripe is diluted quality at the expense of revenue. USC’s greatest strength over other privates is our year-round warm weather.</p>
<p>so usc isn’t prestigious because of a larger student body… = cal, ucla, mich, cornell aren’t prestigious either? It really has nothing to do with class size at all. It clearly lacks nobel prizes, publications, and grad school rankings like many others in this thread have said. And usc definitely carries some sort of prestige because at least in where I’m from in the midwest, usc commands the same respect that goes with many other great schools like the ones I mentioned earlier. The problem is that the surge in prestige/rankings have stagnated for a while. </p>