<p>I'd really appreciate any comments.
For the longest time Amherst, a small liberal arts school, was the highest on my list, but I dont even qualify for financial aid--the cost is around 46,000 a year. However, at USC I'm getting about 35,000 a year--so the cost will be around 9,000 a year. </p>
<p>I'm planning to major in something humanities related and go onto Graduate school, possibly medical school.</p>
<p>So, how is USC in terms of Grade inflation, extracurricular opportunities, Graduate School Placement, Relationship with faculty and advisors (does the larger class size ever make the environment feel bureaucratic?) Would it be wise to choose USC over the small private school?</p>
<p>I have a similar decision as you do
Swarthmore, another top liberal arts college, is offering me $10k of scholarships
Whereas USC is offering $33k --Their trustee scholarship
... This is the ultimate decision... but by the time May 1 rolls around, I will have visited each school 3 times, so maybe that will help.
Which school are you leaning towards tho?</p>
<p>You are comparing apples and oranges. Only you know your financial situation, whether you will need to take out loans if you don't go to USC. The schools are on opposite sides of the country and have very different feels. Do you like living in a big city or a more rural environment? How do you learn best? Small class size or larger? How important is athletics teams? How do you feel about fraternities and sororities? Weather? The liberal arts colleges give four years of guaranteed housing, whereas USC gives one year. Both schools can get you into medical school. I am choosing Stanford with no financial aid over USC with the Presidential Scholarship. I probably would go to Stanford over USC even if I had won the Trustees Scholarship since in my opinion the schools aren't comparable.</p>
<p>jenny, what do you want to study? if i had a choice now, id choose USC because i already hate the LAC/northeast prestige crap (i go to one of the elite private schools back here) and the weather absolutely sucks.</p>
<p>however, swarthmore is ranked considerably higher than USC only in all around education. if you compare USC's business and CNTV departments vs. swarthmore's, swarth can't compare.</p>
<p>edit -- collegebound makes some very good points. my question is: collegebound, what do you plan on majoring in at stanford? english?</p>