<p>honestly, OVERALL, why would one put UCSD above USC?</p>
<p>California has a TON of great universities. Here are the tops ones IMO not including LAC's:</p>
<p>Tier 1:
Cal Tech
Stanford</p>
<p>Tier 2:
Berkeley
UCLA
UCSD
USC</p>
<p>Tier 3:
UCSB
UCI
Pepperdine
USD
UCD</p>
<p>Tier 4:
UCSC
UCR
Santa Clara</p>
<p>Tier 5:
SDSU
LMU
Cal Poly</p>
<p>The above is pretty spot on except the Claremont McKenna colleges aren't listed.</p>
<p>lol? Claremont McKenna colleges?</p>
<p>Note the "not including LACs"</p>
<p>What are Claremont McKenna colleges and Pomona? Is Pomona the same as Cal Poly - Pomona? How come people are raving about these small colleges and comparing them to the likes of Stanford?</p>
<ol>
<li>Stanford</li>
<li>CalTech</li>
<li>Pomona</li>
<li>Berkeley</li>
<li>USC</li>
<li>UCLA</li>
<li>Claremont McKenna</li>
</ol>
<p>The Claremont Colleges are a consortium of small, liberal arts colleges located in the city of Claremont, CA (inland Los Angeles). The colleges consist of Pomona, Claremont McKenna, Scripps, Harvey Mudd, and Pitzer.</p>
<p>Welcome</a> to Claremont.EDU</p>
<p>Pomona College is not the same as Cal Poly Pomona. There are two Cal Polys (San Luis Obispo and Pomona), and they are technically part of the Cal State system.</p>
<p>The Claremont colleges have difficult admission standards and have a smaller liberal arts focus. Harvey Mudd has a technical/engineering focus.</p>
<p>It seems some of the posters here are thinking in terms of 30 years ago with regard to USC. As regards "no LACs", note that the Claremont Consortium colleges (2,3,5,7 below) are colocated, contiguous colleges that pool resources to become an undergraduate campus of 4,900 students... not technically LAC as there are two graduate schools plus a seminary not counted already. So, in strict terms of the published undergrad 25th-75th% SAT midpoint, the highest scoring students currently attend:</p>
<ol>
<li>Caltech (actually highest in the country by a wide margin).</li>
<li>Harvey Mudd</li>
<li>Pomona</li>
<li>Stanford</li>
<li>Claremont McKenna</li>
<li>USC</li>
<li>Scripps</li>
<li>UC Berkeley</li>
<li>UCLA</li>
<li>Pepperdine</li>
<li>Occidental</li>
<li>UCSD</li>
</ol>
<p>WestCoast101 -- I would place Cal Poly Pomona into Tier 4. The quality of te students and facilities really falls midpoint-UC.</p>
<p>USC ahead of Berkeley? In what universe?</p>
<p>[edit: I just noticed DunninLA's criterion. Flawed, but true.]</p>
<p>w/o LACs...imo</p>
<p>Stanford/CalTech
Cal
UCLA
USC
UCSD
UCI/UCD/UCSB
Pepperdine
Santa Clara
UCSC
Cal Poly
Pacific
UCR
UCM/CSUs...</p>
<p>dunnin,
based on what data do you place cal poly pomona in terms of students or facilities into the davis/santa barbara/irvine triad?</p>
<p>never in years reading these boards have i seen this observation.</p>
<p>usc is ahead of cal in many academic programs. the trojan nation has moved more quickly upward than any university and the facts bear this our. president sample's raising of five billion dollars buys a lot of quality.
drj</p>
<p>drj,</p>
<p>What programs, other than film, is USC stronger than Cal in?</p>
<p>I agree that USC has skyrocketed, but I do hear a lot of exaggerations, too.</p>
<p>the annenberg, marshall and leventhal schools are among the best in the nation. only haas is comparable on the cal side from the evidence i have seen. but i invite other information.</p>
<p>Berkeley lacks a dedicated accounting school and a dedicated communications school.</p>
<p>However, Haas is clearly stronger than Marshall.</p>
<p>
<p>[edit: I just noticed DunninLA's criterion. Flawed, but true.]
</p>
<p>Actually, until 'SC decides to open its books and publish a common data set, we have no way of knowing what is "true." :rolleyes:</p>
<p>bluebayou,</p>
<p>This is true. USC uses superscoring, which gives it an advantage in SAT scores that the UCs cannot match.</p>
<p>Based on what I know:</p>
<p>Universities:
Stanford
Berkeley
UCLA
USC/UCSD
UCI/UCSB/UCD</p>
<p>Techs and LACs:
Caltech
Pomona/Harvey Mudd
Claremont McKenna
Cal Poly San Luis Obispo</p>
<p>UCLAri:</p>
<p>yeah, I know about their superscoring (altho I have not the faintest idea how much it helps, if at all), but I was questioning the veracity of USC's "published" numbers, since, without a common data set report, we don't know if those numbers exclude Pete Caroll's players or other special admits, etc.</p>
<p>re: low scoring athletes... this does not affect the 25th and 75th % scores (which are variants of a median), only the average also called mean. I would expect most athletes to score in the lowest quartile, which does not affect the 25th and 75th percentile scores.</p>
<p>In fact, you could theoretically have 25%-1 students scoring something like 600 on the two part SAT without touching that 25th percentile score of 1280. Such a strange distribution would only be seen in a published mean score.</p>