<p>Annual</a> Address to the USC Faculty | Office of the President</p>
<p>Under Nikias’ tenure, the undergraduate numbers have exploded, USC now has three fully institutionalized tranches of students (fall, spring and transfers) and USC is becoming more like Cal than Harvard, a sad state of affairs. It’s all window dressing, IMO.</p>
<p>SeattleTW, your paranoia is showing. “fully institutionalized tranches…” ??? Think there was a conspiracy, too?</p>
<p>USC tracks the performance of all their students and despite your constant bitter complaints, transfers do as well or better than freshman admits. </p>
<p>USC rewards students who are going to be successful. Period. The education provided by the university hopefully gets them started. Your disdain for transfers is regrettable. </p>
<p>In any event, SeattleTW, you are an adult. I suggest you stop torturing yourself. Stop reading statistics. Stop measuring how much better you feel you are to others. Stop grieving over the unfairness you deeply feel. It’s time to move on.</p>
<p>It’s time for USC to move away from the crutches of transfers and embrace excellence like the top tier privates…</p>
<p>USC primary purpose is to educate students.</p>
<p>It’s not, “Be prestigious”.</p>
<p>^ not mutually exclusive.</p>
<p>Not necessarily mutually exclusive, but if it denies admissions to qualified students primarily to chase higher rankings and prestige, then USC is failing in its purpose.</p>
<p>Here’s USC’s mission statement. In sum, it says its role is to educate students and contribute to society. It says nothing about pursing prestige -</p>
<p><a href=“https://about.usc.edu/files/2011/07/USCRole_and_Mission_Statement_1993.pdf[/url]”>https://about.usc.edu/files/2011/07/USCRole_and_Mission_Statement_1993.pdf</a></p>
<p>While USC has done some incredible work at the undergraduate level, it still relies too much on gaming the numbers in order to impress US News. (As some other schools do.) The university needs to spend less time on shortcuts to boost rankings, and instead focus on its weaknesses, i.e, the quality of its graduate, professional and research programs.</p>
<p>Nikias is no Steve Sample. Under Sample’s leadership, the school was becoming more exclusive, the undergraduate student body was reduced in size as well as the transfer classes. In sharp contrast, today the undergraduate student body has exploded and instead of becoming more exclusive, the focus has been on the sliver of freshmen who enter in the fall in order to game the rankings. He’s taking USC in the wrong direction, IMO.</p>
<p>If you’re talking about gaming rankings, I saw that more within Sample’s term as president. But whatever, you only care about USNEWS which has a faulty methodology that does not correlate to academic success and salary.</p>
<p>With what USC is doing under Nikias, I believe he is following the proper purpose of educating students and producing respectable and honorable members of society. Don’t see why “exclusivity” is so important. This isn’t Harvard or Stanford or favoring with elitism. It has always been easy to gain admissions to USC. That has not changed a bit at all, and I am glad that there will be more people who have the chance of obtaining a USC education and degree.</p>
<p>It is NOT easy to gain admission. Of the freshmen who applied to SC for the class entering in August 81 applicants of every 100 were denied.</p>
<p>Many of the graduate programs, particularly in music, dramatic arts, cinematic arts, SCA/Viterbi games and some others have single digit admission numbers.</p>
<p>I will give you that the admissions for more specific departments such as Film are difficult to obtain, but for general admissions, I do not see a problem with it. It is on the same level as schools like UC Berkeley where all you had to do was be in the top 20% of your class. Also, admissions is based on preference, and they will accept mostly people who will likely matriculate to USC. Just like the ploy from the UC system. It is practical, but weird to me at the same time since their goal really is to have the incoming class accept their offer.</p>
<p>Try the admissions rate for transfers or even undergrads for a university like Stanford these days. That is what I consider to be difficult because their application pool is not diluted like the UC’s or USC.</p>
<p>SeattleTW, you are like a dog who bites the hand that feeds him. You attended SC when it was a crappy school. Now that it is a decent school, thanks to the crop of new students (transfers and freshmen), you rag on the transfers. </p>
<p>I bet you go around and tell everyone, “I graduated from a top 25 school.” Which was more probably like top 100 when you attended. And based on your comments on this board, I highly doubt you even cracked 1000/1600 on your SAT. So stop “crutching” on the prestige built by the current crop of students and stop your whining. You are a pathetic Trojan.</p>
<p>RE: increasing numbers of USC students. Even Stanford now has a program to increase the size of its entering classes over the next few years. The program fell afoul of the 2008 recession, but is now being reinvigorated. Therefore, what Nikias has done in terms of increasing size was the harbinger of what others equal or above it stature will do. This topic has been openly discussed at Harvard, for example, but because of the limitations of Harvard’s geographic footprint, it cannot do what Stanford will do. Inherently, these programs acknowledge that these universities have more truly qualified and desireable applicants than they can admit – and regret it.</p>
<p>Great response, Sicilian. It always appeared to me odd that he bags on what USC does now, but when he attended it decades ago, SC was nowhere near to what it is today.</p>