<p>The new president of the University of Southern California was installed on Friday. He announced two major gifts. Dr. C.L. Max Nikias is SC's eleventh president.</p>
<p>A leadership gift by the Annenberg Foundation of $50 million will be awarded to the USC Annenberg School of Communication & Journalism. Annenberg commented, "We need to give talented students and faculty the opportunity to experiment with emerging tools,invent the newsrooms, online media and broadcast studios of the future." The funds will be used to support a new state of the art building on the SC University Park campus. Wallis Annenberg is the longest serving trustee on the USC Board of Trustees.</p>
<p>Recently the Annenberg Foundation donated $5 million to the school for scholarships.</p>
<pre><code>Cogent founder and alumnus, Ming Hsieh, has pledged $50 million to SC to support research and development in the field of nanomedicine for cancer. The university will create the USC Ming Hsieh Institute for Research on Engineering-Medicine for Cancer.
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<p>In 2006 Hsieh donated $35 million to the Viterbi School of Engineering.</p>
<pre><code>Recently SC has received some major grants from the NIH and the Dept. of Health and Human Services. These totaled $19.9 million.
National Cancer Institute awarded the Keck School of Medicine 2.5 million to support
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<p>development of a new class of anticancer drugs against leukemia.</p>
<p>My sister is going to be excited to hear about the Annenberg donation. I truly believe if 'SC keeps at the rate it is going, it will reach top 20 in no time. However, it is bitter sweet, because it will be yet another private school ahead of my Cal. :(</p>
<p>I wouldn’t worry too much about it BayBoi. Regardless of reality, the USNWR will gradually remove all public universities from the top 25. </p>
<p>But financially, I don’t see how USC is better positioned than Cal. USC’s endowment currently stands at $3 billion and Cal’s at $2.6 billion, but Cal does not have a medical school whereas USC does. Yes, USC does charge more tuition than Cal, but it also must give out more money in financial aid. Both schools are large, with 35,000 students each.</p>
<p>Bottom line, I would not worry about Cal losing its standing in the really world. It will remain one of California’s top 3 schools (the other two being Caltech and Stanford).</p>
<p>This said, it is good to see USC improve as well. USC definitely does an excellent job raising money. Cal could learn a thing or two from them.</p>
<p>cal had a larger endowment than usc just ten years ago. ten years from now, even if endowment growth is as slow as it was this past decade, usc will have an endowment over $1 billion larger than cals. give the markets any juice (at all) and the differential will be much larger.</p>
<p>and, realistically, its not as if cal has a ton of room to solicit additional donations from alumni. frankly, given the extraordinary economic diversity of its student body, hovering around fifth in giving per student among public schools is great (in each year from 2007 until 2009, only uva, unc, ucla and wisconsin were higher).</p>
<p>…and the medical school comment would only be particularly relevant if it were operating in the red or happened to be the beneficiary of a very large portion of the universitys endowed funds.</p>
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<p>so far as i can tell, the institutional discount per student at usc is around $13000. that works out to around $28000 in net tuition and fees per undergraduate. at cal, that figure is around $11000, even after accounting for out-of-staters.</p>
<p>that said, again, im not sure this is particularly relevant beyond uscs ability to shift relatively larger portion of its giving to endowed purposes rather than current operations going forward.</p>
<p>…</p>
<p>none of this is to say that usc is necessarily going to ‘pass’ cal any time soon (whatever that means). however, particularly in a world of declining public support for higher education, the resource balance is shifting (and will likely continue to shift) in uscs favor. not because cal (and ucla) are doing anything wrong, but because usc is bringing in boatloads of cash. heck, just look at where the school was in 1970, in 1990 and where it is now.</p>
<p>Would I have any shot at all at USC? I currently live in GA but I was born and raised in SoCal and have always dreamed of becoming a Trojan. My GPA isn’t great; only a 3.38 weighted. My SAT is an 1800 and my ACT is a 25. Not great stats or anything but I have strong EC’s as I have been extremely involved in my school and community for the last four years and I can write a really good essay. When I had my college counselor proof one of my college essays the other day, she claimed it was the best college essay she had ever read. Any chance?</p>
<p>sorry but most likely no. the average UNweighted GPA of an admitted student is 3.8. the average admitted SAT is around 2100 and average ACT is 31-32.</p>
<p>SC is not only raising funds. There has been a determined effort to bring in more top notch professors… Faculty student ratio is a respectable 1/9 ratio which is the same as Brown and lower than Cornell. Highly motivated freshmen are challenged by the Thematic Option program.</p>
<p>New buildings are seen all across campus. Green spaces and courtyards have been enhanced. Increasing numbrs of students enroll each year from eastern and midwestern high schools. There is more economic diversity. SC enrolls more Pell Grant recipients than any other private university, other than Columbia. </p>
<p>Alumni play a large part in university life. They donate scholarships, give lectures, mentor students, participate in merit scholarship interviews and serve in many alumni clubs.</p>
<p>According to the Princeton Review for the 2009-2010 class the average financial aid package was $34,545. </p>
<p>Premier art schools such as cinema, theatre, fine arts and music attract talented students from around the world.</p>
<p>Don’t tell my son who was in Critical Studies that he was in trade school. He did as much writing and research as any history/lit/political science major. He did turn up his nose at the Production majors and noted that without the amount of writing he had to do it was easier for them to get higher gpas.</p>
<p>Do you consider engineering a trade? Substantial amounts of money have been donated to Viterbi.</p>
<p>Props to 'SC. (It’s also good for the state.)</p>
<p>But I have to concur with Alexandre: the publics will continue to slip in the rankings since USNews’ critieria favors privates. Moreover, in California, the Legislature/Regents would much rather raise the rankings of Riverside and Merced than maintain Cal’s status as #1 public. UVa will likely pass it in year or two.</p>
<p>UVa has been in a worse state support situation than Cal and is less likely to get more anytime soon. It’s research programs have failed to grow as much as many competing schools. Its main advantage is a somewhat better endowment at present.</p>
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<li><p>Congrats to USC on the donations…</p></li>
<li><p>Regarding USC’s frosh having a 3.8 unweighted…</p></li>
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<p>I don’t think this part can be verified. USC takes a lot of students from private secondaries, let’s call them “high schools,” and a lot of these incoming students have middling rankings from their hs’s.</p>
<p>Partly in verifying this statement, too, is whether the 3.8 is essentially like the UC a-g coursework, soph and junior courses, etc. I think USC accepts too many middling students from elite private schools for the school to be able to verify this stat.
3. USC sacrifices class rank and gpa, point 2, for SAT scores, along with superscoring, so the 1400 SAT should be correct.</p>
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<li> Climbing teh USN"s rankings?<br></li>
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<p>USC has an administration that cares to climb the rankings, so it has a decent chance to do so.</p>
<p>Generally, </p>
<p>The decline in apps due to the decline in college-aged eligibles will affect USC as generally all privates - moreso than publics becuase publics overenrolled during the wave, so let’s see how USC handles the lesser number of applications. One thing USC could do to keep frosh grades/scores strong is to admit more in the spring, and report only stronger fall admits’ grades/scores. Also direct more to community college and admit them after one year.</p>
<p>That is Southern Branch, to you sir (capitalized! - hehe).</p>
<p>barrons: yeah, I get that, but what you pointed out only affects PA, in which Cal already leads by a large margin. But some (many?) of the other metrics tracked by USNews tend to favor UVa, IMO, bcos they have more of a wealth component. (And they don’t spend millions on a football coach with a ~.500 league record over the past 7 years.)</p>
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<p>Truth be told, NONE of the published 'SC data can be verified since the college refuses to publish its Common Data set. Does anyone truly believe that all athletes are counted in the matriculant report?</p>
Cal also receives over $450 million annually in unrestricted appropriations from the state that USC doesn’t receive. In order to generate $450 million annually from a private endowment, a school would need ~$5.6 billion earning 8% annual returns.</p>
<p>The USNWR rankings are not absolute. Just because Brown is ranked last among the Ivy League does not mean it is the weakest of the 8. I don’t think a difference of 3-7 spots makes a difference in the grand scheme of things. So even if UVa somehow benefits from the USNWR formula and overtakes Cal (I don’t think this will happen anytime soon), it will not be viewed as the #1 public university in the nation. That honor will go to Cal for the foreseeable future. Michigan, UCLA, UNC and UVa will be #2-#5 for a while too.</p>
<p>I’m not sure producing a Common Data Set will solve the problem. CDS’s are just as much apples and oranges. If you mean that USC lacks any semblance of transparency, I would agree.</p>
<p>I would agree that there are elements, say, the bottom 25% of the incoming class that USC doesn’t report. But, too, from what I’ve seen, USC admits too many middling elite private-school kids to verify this 3.8 mean gpa.</p>
<p>A 3.8 unweighted gpa is top-tier, absolute top 10%, probably 95th percentile. There’s no way an average USC student is top 5%.</p>
<p>Not sure I agree, but then again I guess I don’t understand your point. The CDS comes with a well-written set of instructions which have been honed over 20+ years. Sure, colleges that publish a CDS can lie (or just change the instructions to fit their spin like Miami and Wake Forest), but at least the numbers are out there to be challenged by the astute readers…</p>
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<p>I’m guessing such students have high test scores (something 'SC just loves to boast about)?</p>