Purdue vs USC

College Search & Selection
41

<p>
[quote]
USC does have a lot of research $$ these days, mainly from the Department of Defense and National Security Agency. The DOD is giving a lot of money for research in system engineering and defense system design/technology these days. USC was picked to be the major player. I think the proximity to Northrop Grumman plays a big role. In the process, UCLA lost this battle. With the war on terrorrism, USC will continue to have healthy funding while UCLA is watching from the sideline.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>I know you are a consitent USC basher. But UCLA is very close to Northrop Grumman too. It's not that far away to say that is the reason.</p>

42

<p>
[quote]
NRC is old rankings. Where is your link.

[/quote]

You can do the same with the more current USNWR engineering grad rankings...overall USC engineering is ranked high, its individual engineering disciplines are ranked lower.</p>

43

<br>


<br>

<p>Sorry, I need to make a correction to my previous post:
The above three engineering specialties of USC apparently did not participate in the NRC study.</p>

44

<p>Columbia_Student,</p>

<p>Everything I said has been based on facts I saw. I also told you where to find those numbers. I don't consider what I was doing "bashing". I think people should know about it when any school sends false data which results a higher ranking. USC engineering literally rose to the top-10 out of nowhere and they have made this one of the most important, if not the most important, item to market. I recently discovered this discrepancy and I think it's important that people know about it. Had they sent the correct number, I am pretty certain they wouldn't be in the top-10.</p>

45

<p>Look if USC can manipulate the rankings I'm sure a lot of colleges will do that too.
I've personally known that USC in computer engineering/graphics/network is pretty top notch. Nearly 30 years ago, I worked with a director from USC in graphics/game simulation and he brought in several excellent engineers. In the Bay Area, the top networking guy at CISCO and started Junifer Networks came from USC Phd program. I know these 2 incidents are anecdotes but I don't believe USC can manipulate them that far back. But I also read that private colleges like Northwestern also manipulated data, is that true? I'm trying to read that thread now.</p>

46

<p>^well, the peers and recruiters didn't seem to be as impressed by them as you were, according to the scores they gave on US News.</p>

47

<p>Personally I think manipulating the rankings is really unfortunate. USC is definitely not a school you think of when someone lists the top 10 engineering schools (maybe for Film). Columbia_Student's daughter goes to USC, so she is obviously quick to defend the school.</p>

48

<p>Sam, I don't think you have the logic thinking skill to be an investigator. But for FBI, who knows:) You need to provide facts about which NAE/NAS members are not active at USC. I know for a fact that most of them still are working on a daily base, but a member that senior definitely won't work as hard as younger professors, neither do the senior faculty at any other schools. On the other hands, Purdue Engineering is known for being BIG to gain reputation, as well as UIUC and some other B10 schools. In general, most of B10 schools are losing their glamors as the population and industry moving west, except for UM, UIUC, and maybe a few programs from UWisc. The NRC ranking referenced by another is from 12 years ago. They suppose to release a new one this year (or may be next year:). Based on my own observation during my research activity, USC engineering doesn't worry too much about Purdue. Of course, some engineering schools ranking below are better than USC in many of their programs, such as Cornell/UMich/UT-Austin.</p>

<p>It's particularly entertaining as a bunch of academic outsiders arguing academics. I am a Ph.D. student here at USC for several years, and have witnessed USC becoming an excellent school for research over the last decades. A lot of top-notched researches are happening here. As a lot of engineering disciplines are redefining their fields, new assessment methodologies are being formed, and they will be different and favor the developing programs. However, even using the conventional standard, USC engineering has Electrical Eng., Computer Eng., ISE, Petroleum in the group of top 10, with AME, BME in the group of top 20. Some new programs are getting accoladed by industry, such as interactive media and game engineering, which is only rivaled by CMU nationwide.</p>

<p>BTW, SAM has no clue what's the funding situation at USC is. Do you even know the research funding situation of any school? So, stop fabricating facts, be a hard-working engineer, keep your job in this difficult economy, and watch your USC-graduated colleagues promoted to your manager:)</p>

<p>For the bunch of you speculating other cheating, you should look at you in the mirror, ask yourself what kind of ethics you have when the first thing you think of is to cheat.</p>

49

<p>gd, if I tell you USC has better world recognition, you should take it because my words have truth, and yours doesn't. More international students will choose USC over Purdue for engineering than the other way around. </p>

<p>Which engineering program is the top at Purdue? Just tell me. On the contrary, USC has quite some on top in the country. In EE, the signal processing and communications science here are always highly regarded. MPEG's foundation was built at USC 25 years ago, which pioneered the new media era. Communications science has Viterbi, and new advance in quantum computing also adds fame to the program. In computer science and engineering, BGP was kind of born here, and Vision/Graphics/Robotics/AI may be still top 3~5 in the country. As for the whole university, there are more programs at USC better than at Purdue. USC's science departments are bad. Well, Purdue's no better. I personally think for any science discipline, the programs between 15~50 are no difference.</p>

<p>Edit: Sam again, every time (as far as I have seen) there is a USC related topic, you jump out bashing the school. Not saying you are wrong at your opinions, but don't you think you have psychological problems? Or inferior complexity? How do you interact with your USC alumni colleagues? For these many years you stay in LA, have you been to USC campus once. How do you know more about USC to make your comments more insightful? My feeling is you didn't learn much over the years. Are you still bashing Los Angeles? Have you learned to appreciate your surrounding and your colleagues, or just anxiously waiting for your green card? Get over yourself, you are still selling the same old stuff you did many years ago (you may not realize that), which is still not brilliant even after these many years.</p>

50

<p>Let's time I checked Purdue is a state school ranked somewhere in the late 60's with other state schools such as UConn. None of my european friends that go to USC have even heard about Purdue, in fact, USC enrolls more international students than any other university in the country (both undergraduate and graduate).</p>

<p>Don't feed the trolls, Trojans. Let it be!</p>

51

<p>On USC website, they claim to have "31 faculty members elected to the National Academy of Engineering" (NAE website says 20, which already includes the emeritus ones; USC told US News they got 28 but that's two years ago so that's probably the difference between 28and 31). While some of them are emeritus, some of them have <em>never</em> been "full-time professors" at USC before. Some examples: Danny Cohen was a former researcher; Albert A. Dorman did his master there; Paul Kern is a retired 4-star general who was an adjunct professor (usually part-time non-salaried, non-tenure track); Alfred E. Mann is a trustee on board of Alfred Mann Institute; Wanda M. Austin is listed as "research professor", who has no teaching obligation; in fact, she probably doesn't spend much time at USC for teaching or research because she is president and CEO of Aerospace Corporation with 4,000-employees under her. That's 5 there already and I haven't even run through the whole list yet.</p>

<p>QW553,
My coworkers and I get along extremely well. I have a Green Card. I was twice awarded achievement awards. Thanks for your concern!
As for me having issue with USC, you've been reading too much, way too much. It's just that every "mysterious" jump isn't mysterious after all when the data are available and if you look into them. USC jumps out as the oddball because it's the only one among the top-10 that has relatively low peer/recruiter assessment scores and has almost no department in the top-10 (except petroleum); as some others pointed out, I wasn't the only one that was wondering. I just finally took a little time to take a closer look. Being detail-oriented will serve you well in your profession in the future. Last weekend I was rooting for USC football. ;) </p>

<p>USC may very well deserve to be in the top-10 in terms of what's actually happening there. But as far as its US News ranking goes, it appears to be based on false data.</p>

52

<p>For comparison, the numbers that Stanford/MIT/Texas gave to US News aren't even half of, let alone larger than, what are listed on NAE website.</p>

53

<p>
[quote]
Personally I think manipulating the rankings is really unfortunate. USC is definitely not a school you think of when someone lists the top 10 engineering schools (maybe for Film). Columbia_Student's daughter goes to USC, so she is obviously quick to defend the school.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>But she is not in engineering so I have no need to defend USC engineering program. She is in the USC Film school which BTW has no need to be defended. But I'm tired of the consistent USC bashers here on CC.
If you think I'm biased , read about this person that I mentioned in earlier post( I worked on one of his companies). He is highly regarded even among the UCB crowd.
Light</a> Reading - Cisco - Tony Li - Telecom

[quote]
For the uninitiated, Li is considered one of the top IP routing experts in the world, making him a bit of a celebrity in tech circles. He's had a colorful career that's intersected with key times at Cisco and Juniper Networks Inc. (Nasdaq: JNPR - message board). (See Tony Li.)

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Unstrung</a> - Tony Li Rejoins Cisco (Again) - Wireless News Analysis</p>

<p>And top venture capitalist in the Bay Area, graduated from USC engineering school
USC</a> - Viterbi School of Engineering - Leadership - Stevens</p>

<p>Interview</a> with Mark Stevens, General Partner, Sequoia Capital | socalTECH.com</p>

54

<p>Let's give credit where credit is due, QW553. The respectable National Research Council ratings show that most of Purdue's engineering programs are excellent.</p>

<p>Aerospace Engineering:</p>

<h1>7 Purdue</h1>

<p>USC-not rated</p>

<p>Chemical:</p>

<h1>16 Purdue</h1>

<h1>57 USC</h1>

<p>Civil:</p>

<h1>11 Purdue</h1>

<p>USC-not rated</p>

<p>Electrical:</p>

<h1>8 Purdue</h1>

<h1>11 USC</h1>

<p>Industrial:</p>

<h1>3 Purdue</h1>

<h1>22 USC</h1>

<p>Materials Science:</p>

<h1>31 Purdue</h1>

<h1>45 USC</h1>

<p>Mechanical:</p>

<h1>10 Purdue</h1>

<h1>57 USC</h1>

<p>As you can see, Purdue is a better engineering school overall and is better known worldwide among engineers and scientists. It takes decades (not a year or two) to build up a department's reputation, so these rankings from the 1995 NRC study are still relevant today.</p>

55

<p>
[quote]
gd, if I tell you USC has better world recognition, you should take it because my words have truth, and yours doesn't. More international students will choose USC over Purdue for engineering than the other way around.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Care to provide a source for this truth of yours that I don't have? Before claiming that I have no truth and you're all truth, you should know that my parents ARE international students, both engineers who studied at the University of Tokyo, which makes them some of the brightest minds in Japan at their time, and both completed their PhDs at Ivy League schools here in the US; they have plenty colleagues from UT who've gone to Purdue for graduate studies engineering but clearly not as many to USC for me to have heard them ever mention it. The reason is simple, regardless of how shafted Purdue gets by USNews, it is an internationally recognized superb engineering school.</p>

<p>
[quote]
Which engineering program is the top at Purdue? Just tell me.

[/quote]

Oh I don't know, there's industrial, aeronautical, agricultural, nuclear, mechanical, civil; all of these programs rank in the top 3-10. QW, no one's making some outlandish claim that Purdue is a better engineering school than MIT, but it is better than USC in engineering. Purdue has specialized strengths like USC's film school, that's all.</p>

<p>
[quote]
Don't feed the trolls, Trojans. Let it be!

[/quote]
</p>

<p>But just because someone has an opinion, it doesn't make them a troll. USC is simply one school I personally would not apply to due to its general lack of solid academic programs and moreso due to the large amounts of high school students who mindlessly apply there due to the "SoCal" fad among teenage. But hey, if it makes you feel any better, I don't think kids who apply to Ivys for the sake of Ivys are an entirely different breed either, possibly a little smarter though.</p>

56

<p>
[quote]
USC is simply one school I personally would not apply to due to its general lack of solid academic programs and moreso due to the large amounts of high school students who mindlessly apply there due to the "SoCal" fad among teenage.

[/quote]

What do you mean by lack of solid academic? Do you know how many colleges that we have? about 4000+. Even if USC is only top 30, it's still pretty solid academic. I know kids on CC often want to split hairs about which school has better ranking and such but in reality you learn the same stuff even in top 100 universities. However, the important factor for choosing college is still fit.
BTW, from your post it seems like you are looking to transfer out of Nortwestern right? Why? Is it not a fit for you?</p>

57

<p>I didn't even know USC had an engineering school. You wouldn't know it by looking at the US News undergrad engineering rankings, since USC doesn't make the top 10 for anything. Purdue makes the top 10 overall, and is ranked in the top 10 for 6 different categories.</p>

<p>Also, it's amusing that someone accused Big Ten schools of trying to be BIG to gain reputation, when Purdue, U of M, UIUC, etc all have less than 2500 engineering grad students compared to ~4000 at USC.</p>

58

<p>Columbia_student, are you a stalker hehe, check again that post was from an entire year ago. I was considering transfering out back to the Northwest or somewhere not in the Midwest because as a freshman completely new to midwestern winters, my first winter in Chicago seriously got me to think if I would be able to do these winters for four years. As a matter of fact, today it is 18 degrees here, a good 20 degrees lower than New York and Boston, 30 degrees lower than Portland, brrr. But hey I learned to cope with it, and upon talking to some upperclassmen from Florida and California, I learned that even though the weather can seriously depress you, it is worth it when I love my classes as much as I do. Besides, now I'm no longer a freshman and know to bundle up in 5-6 layers of clothes like an actual Northwestern student!</p>

<p>Stop stalking me creeper parent :) Purdue's a great school, just accept it already!</p>

59

<p>Looking at my past posts, I just realized you would have had to browse through 13 pages of my posts to find my two impulsive posts about transferring out of this cold weather? Goodness, creepy.</p>

60

<p>CCers do browse through past post history. That is not a stalker, most people on cc do that. That is the reason why CC has your post history to understand why people post the way they post, kind of a bit of background check. There are a lot of trolls out in internet land.
BTW, I did not browse through 13 pages, I kelpt clicking to where I can see where you are going to college.</p>