<p>amosk1120,</p>
<p>The acceptance rates that MOM mentioned were directly quoted from the newest version of US News. How can you “guarantee” the numbers were incorrect.</p>
<p>^I think (s)he means that they are not correct for the 2011-2012 cycle. For example, one of the ones I am sure of is that Johns Hopkins was confirmed at 18% acceptance for RD this year.</p>
<p>I don’t really have time to research each individual college’s acceptance rates for this year, so I just referenced the acceptance rates as published in the 2011 Edition of US News & World Report Best Colleges. (Note, I did document my statistics properly - and, yes, they are from something in print on paper purchased from Barnes & Noble, as opposed to from the Internet, because I am old!) I know that US News is not a final authority on anything, but it is a helpful guide for stats at a glance, even if they are a bit dated already. My stats and your comments about Johns Hopkinds, etc, actually support the point that CC should not have a hard and fast list of Top Universities, since things are in flux each year.</p>
<p>Also, does Johns Hopkins have ED or EA? If so, then the RD rates of acceptance are only one part of its overall acceptance rate. I know that several top colleges accept far more ED students than RD students (Vanderbilt, Cornell, as two examples) but, at the end of the year, the colleges merge the ED, EA and RD acceptance rates to come up with an overall acceptance rate. USC does not do ED or EA, although we had wished they did!</p>
<p>OOPS - Typo above - Meant to write “Johns Hopkins,” NOT “Johns Hopkinds”! I tell my kids to always proof what they write a few times - I should have done the same!</p>
<p>Final comment for the day. I am not sure that 2011-2012 stats posted on CC, in newspapers, or on other Internet general college sites should be considered the real and final overall admissions numbers at this point. I would refer directly to colleges.</p>
<p>amosk11, the printed acceptance rates in a respected national publication seem a teeny, tiny bit more reliable than anonymous posts on a discussion forum…</p>
<p>('specially when the kids always seem to mix up “matriculated” with “accepted” and do not take yield into consideration.)</p>
<p>Oh clearly because SC is ranked higher in one (of the countless, and generally more respected) rankings system, it should be placed on the CC top universities. Also, selectivity and admissions rates don’t necessarily translate to an elite college. Certainly they are correlated, but that’s all it is – a correlation.</p>
<p>Take for example SDSU - with an acceptance rate of 36.4% (as per USNWR’s cited percentage and their admissions home page). Then take other schools like Michigan, which is scores better than SDSU, which had a 50% acceptance rate. The reason is because people in Michigan know whether or not they’ll get into the school, so generally only those with targeted stats will apply, while the rest will apply to MSU. However, with USC, many (disillusioned) students have the pipe-dream that maybe, just maybe they’ll be accepted, which is why so many underqualified applicants apply, further inflating their admissions rate.</p>
<p>Also, schools like USC superscore their SATs, and a number of private schools (Notre Dame and Duke especially come to my mind, though I don’t feel like finding the sources atm) aren’t exactly transparent in their publications of admission rates/average SATs/average GPAs, etc. Which turns into artificially high numbers. Another issue I have with USC is that it accepts many of its underqualified students through Spring Semester so they don’t have to include them in the general admissions profile. It really is gaming the system. I’m not denying USC is a great institution – it certainly is, and I’d be a fool to argue otherwise – but it’ll take much, much more than being ranked 20 something in the USNWR for a year for it to reach the level of other top schools.</p>
<p>Just to clearify MOMANDBOYSTWO, the Johns Hopkins acceptance rate was 18% for RD. I’m not sure what it was for EA but that could obviously make a difference I understand. And alamemom, I try to always get my facts from somewhere reputable and I know I heard that from an online publication that I frequent way back when the decisions were out but I just can’t find the link but I am sure that is indeed their RD acceptance rate. I’m not confusing it for anything else.</p>
<p>g0ld3n: I don’t have any doubt that Johns Hopkins was 18% RD acceptance rate, so I didn’t mean to offend you by my comment. When I first started looking at colleges with my child last year, I was surprised at how high some of the ED acceptance rates were in comparison with the low RD rates at these amazing schools. (Actually, none of the acceptance rates are high, but ED seems the way to go at several colleges, including William & Mary, Vanderbilt, UVA, Cornell, to name a few east coast schools.) That is why I realized that you have to read statistics carefully to figure out the whole math story of admissions at each college.</p>
<p>Sharkfin: Do you not think that ALL colleges these days are “gaming” the system on some level? They are all competing for those top spots on the US News rankings, whether we like it or not. Not sure why you think that #23 in the rankings this year means that USC is still not in line with other “top universities.” What would it take in your mind to make USC better than the 22 schools that it still needs to “conquer” in the rankings, or make it deserve its reputation over “top universities,” such as Michigan, UCLA, UVA, etc, that it surpassed in the ratings this year? What is your list/idea of which schools are the “top universities,” and what criteria do you use to rank them? Just curious. I know these are hard questions to answer succinctly, so feel free to ignore if you don’t have time. </p>
<p>Also, you appear to attend UC Berkeley, which I just noticed is currently ranked #22 by US News. Is that a “top university” on your list? What will people think if USC were to surpass Berkeley in the US News rankings at some point? </p>
<p>I need to quit stirring the pot, and am not being antagonistic in any mean way. Call me a simpleton, but I just don’t understand CC’s and your opposition to naming USC as a “top university.”</p>
<p>Go Trojans :-)</p>
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<p>it would make the USnews ranking more of a joke than it is now. It would also have a ton of USC students saying 'SEE!? we’re better than berkeley now; Be wary CalTech, we’re coming for you next!" </p>
<p>USnews makes like 35% of it’s score for universities based on money, which private universities generally have a much higher amount than public ones. So it’s very biased towards private universities. In rankings where money isn’t taken into account, you usually see Cal and UCLA dominate USC in rankings. Not to say that USC isn’t a good school, but it’s one ranking out of literally dozens. And in those dozen other rankings, USC doesn’t rank higher than UCLA or Cal; Even in forbes where UCLA is ranked in the 70s, USC is ranked like 300.</p>
<p>in seriousness though, even if USC surpasses berkeley in rankings, all it would be attributed two is the UCs declining in ranking due to their being defunded by california, as opposed to USC actually being the superior university.</p>
<p>It sounds like you’re rather bitter about something =/ While I agree that it’s questionable that USC is ranked right next to Cal, I don’t think you can say the same for UCLA. And actually, if the UCs are declining in ranking (since you place such weight on rankings, I assume you see it to be synonymous with quality) due to a lack of funding by California, it <em>would</em> make USC the superior university. Like it or not, fundings play a big part in attracting bright minds. To say that USC might only be better because they have more funding is like saying “Well, you only won this match cause you’re taller and more muscular. If I were that tall and muscular, I’d win!”</p>
<p>While I do agree that USC should be on the CC Top Universities list, I also agree that USC won’t surpass Cal unless the state budget problem worsens even more (and I’m not just saying this because I am going to Cal). USC is a great school, so much that I am not ruling out the idea of maybe even transferring there later on in my career if I do not like it at Cal but to say that USC is currently as close to the world renown Berkeley by a single digit is a total exaggeration. To say that USC is not a top university and doesn’t deserve to be on CCs Top Colleges is foolish, but to also make most of that claim through the USNews ranking is even more foolish. If you took the average of all the decently reputable sources such as Times, Forbes, USNews, etc etc and averaged them Cal and UCLA would still come out ahead of USC way more than 2-5 places. If rankings are your tool for reason, you should use all of them and not just an outlier.</p>
<p>Good points about all of the rankings - Who knows what colleges will land where in all of the different ones each year. </p>
<p>I guess we just think that USC is pretty great. No one in our family has ever attended college in CA before, so we have no historical bias. Although we visited UCLA, UCSD, and Berkeley, the large sizes, the rumors of CA government budget problems, and the low numbers of out-of-state students in the CA public university system steered us away from those, since we are from the east coast. In the end, my child just liked USC the best out of every college he saw on both coasts! The truth is that until the past week of reading these CC posts, we didn’t even know the relative rankings of USC to other top schools. Now that our child will be attending USC, it seems suddenly more relevant, important and exciting to support USC.</p>
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<p>trust me, i’m not.</p>
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in research they’re pretty much peers. Cal has more top-10 PHD programs, so overall it’s a better university, but not by much. (this explains the usual 2-3 lead cal has in rankings over UCLA)</p>
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<p>superior is a pretty subjective word. pretty sure UCLA and Cal both have higher cited faculty than both USC. It’s also pretty impressive that UCLA and Cal, along with UVA, are the only 3 public universities in the top 25. </p>
<p>Even if USC is superior in ranking, not rankings*, then this is only petty and not related in some feature of USC’s own, but rather the detriment of california’s econmy, and hence it’s public universities. It’s still to be determined what the future of both these public universities will be, i think it’ll pretty doubtful that they’ll just fall under though.</p>
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<p>as does having highly cited faculty and prestige. Funding is just one of many, many factors.</p>
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<p>as i said above, there are many ways in which a university might be said to be ‘better.’ For example, one might say that university A is in a ‘better’ or safer neighborhood than university B. Most would argue that that comment is petty, and i’d agree. Both universities have some of the world’s faculty, one just happens to have ‘better faculty’ than another.</p>
<p>either way, i think these anti-UC comments are simply being made by fear mongerers. There’s no evidence to support that the california budget problems are affecting the UCs to the detriment of the students. right now it’s just all speculation.</p>
<p>Thanks for that grammatical correction, but when I said “place so much weight on rankings” I was referring to the ‘dozens of rankings’ you mentioned, not ranking in itself. So, I don’t believe I’m grammatically incorrect, or am I? (Seriously, haha. I’d like to know.)
I completely agree that superiority is extremely subjective, but I was simply arguing based on your premises. You did firmly imply that USC is currently not superior to UCLA or Cal, after all.</p>
<p>Back to the point, is it really all speculation? I don’t know much about these things, but from what I’ve read over the past few months, the budget cuts have affected UCLA significantly. All the horror stories about people unable to get classes they want and having to graduate in 5 years. That’s what made me dismiss UCLA. Is this untrue?</p>
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to be honest, i didn’t mean to imply i was correcting your grammar, i was trying to emphasize that USC is generally only higher than the top UCs in one ranking, rather than in rankings in general.</p>
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<p>those stories are pretty bogus. Cuts are being made, but nothing horifically important is being cut. They cut tutoring for example that they did in school (which, i could be wrong, but i think they reinstated?) but that’s not that big of a deal considering people can easily form study groups or you can just drop by any of the TAs/professor’s office hours to ask them for help.</p>
<p>i’ve been unable to get a few classes that i wanted due to them getting full. however, i’ve never met any professor who refuses to add students to the classroom. So again i think this is pretty bogus. If people take 5 years to graduate, i’m inclined to think it’s their fault. </p>
<p>Hell, i was walking across campus the other day, and i heard a girl complaining that she was finishing too fast. She said that she had as many units as a junior even though she had only been at UCLA two years. (which you can do if you take like 17/18 units per quarter/take summer courses)</p>
<p>this is also supported by the fact that some girl wrote an op-ed complaining about UCLA’s maximum unit cap saying it was too low (216 units, which, if you take an average of 12 units per quarter, is about a max of 6 years) saying that many other schools like stanford and harvard don’t have caps. Trust me, there’s plenty of overachievers at UCLA taking a ton of units.</p>
<p>All in all i think most of these “horror stories” are pretty dubious. Again, i’ve yet to hear one person complain about this. The biggest cause for concern around campus is rising fees, but that’s completely out of our control, so people are just doing what they can and trying to study.</p>
<p>Before I take beyphy’s side I want to simply restate I firmly support USC’s petition to be in CCs Top Universities List but I also feel like I need to help rid this completely unwarranted rumor of the 5 year graduation ********. Most of these ridiculous rumors come from:</p>
<p>A.) Parents of non attendees
B.) counselors
C.) rejected applicants
D.) ignorant acceptees</p>
<p>Notice how I didn’t say anyone who is actually a current student? That’s because people who are actually students and know the actual way it is inside the campus know that that myth is a bunch of crap. Yes there are cuts that affect tuition and some classes are tight (they’ve always been tight though). </p>
<p>Notice how the CC message boards aren’t full of people panicking about graduating in 5 years? That’s because it’s blown beyond proportion by jealous rejectees, ignorant people that don’t actually ask a significant number of students on the campus, and parents/counselors who generally know nothing.</p>
<p>I have heard of several people whose friends/roommates complained of having to graduate in 5 years (I believe I’ve actually read a first-hand account of someone who was looking to transfer because of that, but I’m simply too lazy to look it up so you can ignore this), maybe it is their fault. It’s true that I’ve probably been too quick to judge, though.</p>
<p>Oh well, they’re all great colleges (: This does cast UCLA in a notably better light in my eyes, so thanks for that. Back to the original discussion, no amount of support is likely to put any new unis on CC’s top universities list, but who cares? Go Trojans! (:</p>