<p>“Santa Monica has the beach and what else? Expensive shops that no college student could ever hope to afford. And Westwood is a soul-less student ghetto whose retail presence has been declining for 30 years. And on top of this you also get the worst traffic in Southern California.”</p>
<p>Santa Monica does in fact have some really cheap shops and restaurants (that are still delicious) if you walk around enough–and Santa Monica is definitely a place that’s fun to explore. And despite what you think, Westwood is still a very nice area (I wouldn’t call it a “student ghetto”) that people from all over LA like to visit. And anywhere you go in LA you’ll get “the worst traffic in Southern California.” You get it on the Westside, you get it in Hollywood, you get it in the Valley, you get it making the short drive from SC to Downtown. I’ve hit traffic on the freeways at midnight. It’s inescapable. </p>
<p>Although I will concede that I may have over exaggerated a bit on Downtown LA. While it is mostly office buildings, they have opened a lot of really nice bars and such and it can be a fun place to be if you are over 21. </p>
<p>And tetrahedr0n, I think you may be underestimating South Central. There is no way that I would feel/be nearly as safe walking through the neighborhoods around USC than Ann Arbor.</p>
<p>“I’m getting the feeling we’re a few posts away from invoking big scary black men, which is the usual way these conversations go.”</p>
<p>They do? Is it perhaps because you insert this ideology into the dialogue? </p>
<p>“I guess I’m off by all of 10%. 4.3 million versus 3.8 million. Point stands - talking about the overall crime statistics is utterly pointless.”</p>
<p>I wasn’t talking about the overall crime statistics of LA and Ann Arbor. I was talking about the area around the Michigan campus and the area around USC. As I implied earlier, you can walk 5 miles in any direction from anywere on the Michigan campus and feel/be reasonably safe. You can hardly walk even 5 blocks from USC and feel the same way. Sorry if that incites some sort of racial slight that you feel i might be making, but that’s just the reality of the situation. My point still stands.</p>
<p>“I completely agree ultimately UM is the better choice for a number of reasons, but it’s not as if UM unconditionally dominates on every consideration.”</p>
<p>Michigan doesn’t dominate USC in every area. No one ever said that. My point was that to bring up the overall safety of the surrounding neighborhoods where both schools stand and say they are comparable is NOT reasonable.</p>
<p>UIUC has the best rep for EE, followed by GT and Mich. Purdue and USC trail.</p>
<p>Yup, UIUC pretty highly ranked for both EE and CS.</p>