Stanford vs USC full tuition

Colleges and Universities A-Z Stanford University
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<p>Yes, visiting USC for two days of interviews with my daughter as a Finalist for the Trustee Merit Award has been the impetus for a surprising, even to me, consideration of USC vs. Stanford. The reason is not just the seeming happiness, vibrancy, articulateness and friendliness of the USC students, but the apparent reasons for it. USC seems to be devoting considerable resources to undergraduate education with tremendous individualized support and opportunity for students. They seem to well value their highest performing students, most of whom have had Ivy or similar acceptances. The extent this comes through to students and the positive effect on a student may be an intangible to consider. Is it a plus to be an especially highly regarded student receiving lavish bonus opportunities or just another brilliant undergraduate student? </p>

<p>Interesting, the gap in SAT’s and GRE’s with the “average” USC and Stanford students at all reported deciles is narrowing considerably. USC clearly notes they look for excellence and passion in non-academic areas. Perhaps they are attracting a different group of students from Stanford with differing personal qualities and attributes. Neither better nor worse, but different. As I indicated elsewhere intellectual intelligence is quite different than emotional intelligence, a quality not included in rankings.</p>

<p>Bottom line is I have unanswered questions about Stanford. I will be spending time on campus in the coming weeks and will meet with the son of a good friend who is a dorm advisor, along with some of his advisees. My daughter has a friend from her HS who is currently a freshman who she is contacting. We will both visit for admit weekend at the end of the month</p>

<p>Rankings certainly support the superiority of Stanford. In fact, Stanford holds extremely high US and world rankings. Looking at the factors rankings are based on, it does not seem they relate especially well to undergraduate education and are all based on a similar core including ratings by faculty at other schools, faculty salaries and faculty awards. These measures seem highly correlated. Judging from some of the posters who appear to be faculty, I suspect there is a network effect such that an Ivy or Stanford faculty may well be more prone to judge a currently similarly ranked school higher than a USC, in part a self-identification and “halo effect” from current rankings, rather than current programs. As an aside, this would be similar to BCS rankings where the “elite” BCS schools are more commonly being beaten in playoffs by non-BCS schools, causing much discussion of the ranking system.</p>

<p>I am simply looking at this from the perspective of removing pre-conceived notions and taking each school and what they are offering in this case as I find them. The input received from all on this site is extremely helpful. I want to emphasize I expect the visits to Stanford in the coming weeks and the admit program to provide very valuable information for a “head to head” (that’s funny!) comparison. Thanks again.</p>

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<p>Hello OP and Congratulations to your daughter on having such hard won options. I recall having a similar set of choices for both my kids. There were scholarships to be had for merit not need based (we find ourselves at the borderline of need but that is another thread). It made for April being a long month. Ultimately we sat down with each kid and went over the scenarios of how much each cost, how much we as parents could/would contribute and how much the kid was expected to contribute via jobs during school and summers depending on their choices. One kid is science, the other is humanities. One kid has med school in front of them now and the other is still in school with a future waiting to unfold. Both chose Stanford. The science kid worked hard, loved the school- yes vibrant, engaging, wonderful Stanford and graduated per our financial agreement without debt. She paid more personally for her percentage of the agreement then most pay for say those expensive California state school’s 4 year tuition.
The other kid also chose Stanford and as I said, that story is still in progress. I can say the latter kid feels like it is an Academic candy store. Thrilled with classes, profs and the whole Stanford feel. So, if it’s a matter of the money being there regardless then come up with different plans, lay them out and let the student decide what type of future they wish to take on.</p>

<p>Best wishes.</p>

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<p>If she’s going to be a premed, she should just go to USC w/ full tuition. She’s going to have to pay hundreds of thousands for med school later on — save money now while you can, otherwise she’ll be stacked with loans and debt. Plus, for med school, she needs to have a high GPA (doesn’t matter what school she goes to, med schools don’t care about this and simply want high numbers) — USC will be easier than Stanford, Columbia, and Princeton (which have grade deflation, especially for Biology) to get a high GPA as a premed.</p>

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<p>That makes sense for pre-med. She is a gifted writer (per her mentors). Her focus is journalism and literature. She was named an Annenderg Scholar in USC’s school of Journalism, trustee award (full tuition) and invited to apply to the Thematic options Honors program and can double major at USC. We are both less familiar, thus far, with Stanford’s similar program offerings. The description on Stanford’s web page for their Freshman humanities program are oddly relatively limited and under construction. We both will be spending much more time at Stanford in the coming weeks.</p>

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<p>You can get a great education at USC – and at most other top universities. Often it’s more about the individual student and how much s/he puts into the experience and takes good courses and gets involved in the campus intellectual life. The difference is that Stanford, Columbia, etc. have a better academic reputation and there’s the luxury – elite college – aspect of it. In terms of the quality of education, I don’t think there would be significant difference. In terms of the academic reputation, the difference is not worth $200K for me, and I would send my child to USC. But ultimately you have to decide whether you want to pay all that money to say your child went to a very fancy school.</p>

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<p>I think it is important to maintain a respectful attitude in these discussion. I was actually responding to your comment which does not reflect student’s self-evaluation, but your perception of their self-evaluation:</p>

<p>“a campus with students whom you KNOW are academically, athletically, and artistically gifted, the best of the best in the entire world” </p>

<p>Further, you stated,</p>

<p>"Your comment about emotional intelligence is a red herring, and I can assure you that there are more students with high EQ’s at Stanford than USC. </p>

<p>What is the basis for your assurance? Do you have an objective basis?</p>

<p>“As someone who has visited both schools during the actual school year, I can assure you that Stanford students are more vibrant and intellectually curious than USC students”. </p>

<p>Again, that is a meaningful, but subjective assessment. As it is subjective, it would be useful to know what, if any, affiliation you have with Stanford.</p>

<p>Thank you again for your input.</p>

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<p>Two things I have recently learned:</p>

<ol>
<li><p>The US News and other rankings warrant close scrutiny with regard to validity for undergraduate education quality.</p></li>
<li><p>The University rankings, whether valid or not for undergraduate programs, strongly reinforce the self-perception of “top” ranked schools and the perception of those applying.</p></li>
</ol>

<p>My goal is to identify the relative merits of these two choices culled from others, including “prestige schools” as opposed to merits based on reputation. The latter subject to many factors including a ranking system few likely examine carefully. The only reason for this exercise was an incredibly favorable impression of USC after peaking carefully under the hood vs an incredible reputation and ranking for Stanford.</p>

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<p>Thank You Stanford parentX2,</p>

<p>The decision is my daughter’s and she is doing her own “due diligence”. As the parent of two bright children, you probably also are comfortable with their sense of what is best for them, yet independently investigate factors involving big decisions in their lives. I find the strong attitudes and beliefs of some posting fascinating, as well as the power of rankings which are likely often unexamined with regard to their basis and validity for undergraduate education in a University setting.</p>

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<p>Can’t wait to learn where she decides to go. She has such great options.</p>

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<p>

Football player whom we know quite well goes to Stanford. He has all the “intellectual vibrancy” of a doorstop. But . . . well, you know . . . it’s PAC12 Football. I do enjoy all these generalizations on CC. Stanford is VERY well known for catering to its athlete class. Indeed, Staford is kind a barbell institution: very smart Asians on the one hand, intellectually vacuous athletes on the other, with a mix of weird band members in between. Stanford truly has to be among the most over-rated undergraduate institutions ever.</p>

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<p>Well, that is a different perspective from plantasmagoric and solomn!</p>

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<p>This is so completely false. I was about to post in the ‘why not Stanford’ thread about misconceptions about Stanford. One of the most common ones is that the athletes are ‘got in easily’ or ‘are dumb.’ Consider that only about ~800 students in the student body are varsity athletes (a little over 10%), or 200 per class. Of those, most are in a sport where recruitment has 0 effect on admissions. Of those 200, a large portion are walk-ons. And even those who were recruited have to be approved by the admissions office before recruitment can continue. See this:</p>

<p><a href=“http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704364004576132503526250500.html[/url]”>http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704364004576132503526250500.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>In fact, it’s because Stanford’s admissions standards are so high that the pool of potential athletes is significantly narrowed. It’s also the reason that Stanford has lost coaches before - in one case a few years ago, the basketball coach abruptly left Stanford in anger a few weeks after the admissions office told him that they refused to admit a basketball player he wanted to recruit.</p>

<p>Consider that the best student-athletes are those that are a) amazing athletes, and b) amazing students. Where do you think these students end up? At Stanford, of course, because it can offer them top athletics, top academics, and above all, an athletic scholarship. By contrast, schools such as Harvard and Yale are stuck with those who are mediocre students but strong athletes (these students don’t usually get into Stanford), or mediocre athletes but strong students. They end up with the less desirable athletes simply because they can’t offer athletic scholarships and because they don’t have the top athletic teams like Stanford.</p>

<p>USC on the other hand ends up with athletes that are dumb as rocks. IIRC, USC has come under fire from the NCAA for not maintaining academic standards, which says a lot considering how low the minimum is set. In various rankings, Stanford always comes out at the top in the country for both the academic performance and athletic performance of its teams, including its football team. And athletes at Stanford don’t major in fluff majors like “sports science” (i.e. a major in gym). They major in engineering, sciences, social sciences, etc. For example, Andrew Luck, the #1 NFL draft pick, is a civil engineering major. There’s a reason that Stanford’s graduation rate for athletes is the highest in the nation among D-I programs (comparable with its overall graduation rate). USC’s graduation rate for athletes isn’t very good.</p>

<p>[Bollier</a> Earns Top Academic Honor as Academic All-Pac-12 Announced - Stanford University’s Official Athletic Site](<a href=“http://www.gostanford.com/sports/w-swim/spec-rel/040612aaa.html]Bollier”>http://www.gostanford.com/sports/w-swim/spec-rel/040612aaa.html)</p>

<p>Stanford athletes would take serious offense at the suggestion that they are “intellectually vacuous.” Honestly, do you think that athletic = automatically not interested in intellectual pursuits? How naive. The Rhodes Scholarship committee would disagree with you. Most students at Stanford would tell you that nearly all athletes are just as intelligent and hardworking. Were it not for their athletic gear, they’d be indistinguishable from the rest of the student body.</p>

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<p>um, placido240: you were rejected from Stanford, if memory serves? Or maybe it was your kid? Your post reminds me of a particular Aesop’s fable. ; )</p>

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<p>placido240, i go to USC and you can say the same about USC. honestly, i would tell TS to go to USC due to the extreme cost of stanford. they are both great schools and in a few years USC will have an equal academic reputation as stanford. so much great scientific research is going on at USC its crazy and we are consistently beating MIT, stanford and the UCs in engineering competitions, especially our electrical engineering/CS robotics program</p>

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<p>@docfreedaddy,</p>

<p>I find it curious that you’re quick to criticize me for providing subjective assessments, and then subsequently endorse placido240’s view that Stanford has a dumbbell culture, a ludicrous idea that phantasmagoric quite nicely refutes. Cognitive dissonance, perhaps? (Never mind that placido240 blatantly lumps together “smart” and “Asian.”)</p>

<p>My point in saying that students at Stanford know that they’re among the best of the best was not to seem elitist; rather, it was to point out that students at Stanford need not worry about the quality of discussions they’ll be having, or that any of their peers don’t deserve to be there. With such a stellar pool of applications, the admissions committee can afford to pick the best of the best (and, sadly, leave many of the best in the reject pile). Everyone there is on equal footing, and there is no stratification created by honors colleges like the type at many public universities and USC, for example. I’m not saying that stratification is a bad thing, necessarily – but the campus cultures at USC and Stanford are, from my personal observation, fundamentally different. </p>

<p>Obviously, I have no objective assessment for EQ, but I make my assertion based on 1) my personal visits to both campuses, and 2) the admissions committee’s ability to read students’ essays and recommendations, and I would imagine that they tend to pick students whose emotional intelligence is high. But my second point is disputable. Certainly, though, the USC supplement gives fewer opportunities to explicate yourself to the committee than Stanford’s. </p>

<p>I am an admitted student to Stanford, and have visited both schools during the school year, unlike you. And from talking with students at both schools, as well as observing and investigating both schools’ students’ academic work and research, students at Stanford are more intellectually engaged. Finally, know that there are real advantages to going to a school where the dominant aspect of the entire school’s culture is academically-focused, rather than fun-focused or restricted to a subset of the school. </p>

<p>Finally, I can assure you that my defense of Stanford is not consciously motivated by rankings, and it seems like a red herring to me to claim rankings are a substantial factor in influencing our opinions of Stanford or other top schools. </p>

<p>By no means am I criticizing USC, as it is an excellent institution. But Stanford is just in a different league. Rankings, flawed though they may be, reflect Stanford’s reputation, and do not drive it.</p>

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<p>Stanford is not great because it’s ranked high; rather, Stanford is ranked high because it is great. I don’t care for overall undergraduate rankings, which are arbitrary and misleading. I do put stock in subject/departmental rankings, even if they are graduate ones, because the relationship between graduate and undergraduate strength in a given subject is about the same at Stanford (the same can’t be said of most other schools, where the two are distinctly separated, and an undergrad’s experience in a top department can be noticeably worse than a grad student’s). And those subject rankings demonstrate quite well why Stanford is deserving of its reputation.</p>

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<p>Hi Phantasmagoric and Solemn,</p>

<p>I appreciate your input and believe there is substantial value to the intellectual distillation process in these discussions. It seems rankings do hold considerable importance to both of you, as they do to the college bound consumer. Please note I have a professional and personal background in measurement science and am intrigued with this discussion simply because my careful inquiry and assessment of USC did not correlate well with its ranking.
It was but yesterday that I focused on the validity of rankings, first by reading what they actually measured, then looking to see what others have published. i’d appreciate your thoughts on the USNWR ranking as assessed by Bob Samuels, President of the University Council. His analysis would likely be of interest to all:</p>

<p>[Bob</a> Samuels: How the U.S. News & World Report College Rankings Are Destroying Higher Education](<a href=“HuffPost - Breaking News, U.S. and World News | HuffPost”>How the U.S. News & World Report College Rankings Are Destroying Higher Education | HuffPost College) </p>

<p>I will look for other opinions from additional credible sources.</p>

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<p>@docfreedaddy,</p>

<p>Please cite evidence of my saying that rankings “hold considerable importance” to me. That I think Stanford is a stellar school does not mean rankings are considerably important to me. Do not put words in my mouth. </p>

<p>If I’m not mistaken, your “careful” inquiry and assessment of USC amounted to perusing the school website (akin to taking a political party’s assertions at face value) and briefly visiting the school. I would be curious, though, to know how many schools you’ve visited and conducted your rigorous analyses on? Did you talk with several faculty at all of the schools? Sit with several current students and hold in-depth conversations with them? Talk with them about the quality of their academic research? Ask them what they do in their spare time? Ask them what kinds of opportunities the university opened up to them?</p>

<p>The image schools project will inevitably be polished to the outsider, and on the surface very little distinguishes one college student from another (I assure you I could not tell, on the surface, a Harvard student from a USC student).</p>

<p>I don’t doubt that the USNWR rankings are toxic to American higher education; rankings, however, are totally irrelevant to the discussion of the relative merits of Stanford and USC.</p>

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</p>

<p>You ask others “to maintain a respectful attitude in these discussion” yet you continually patronize us. I am not college-bound, nor currently attending Stanford, but pursuing a PhD. I have more perspective on this than you think. I have already stated that I don’t put any stock in overall rankings, yet you don’t seem to believe me. Here’s an article that I’ve often posted and endorsed about the US News rankings, written by the previous Stanford president Gerhard Casper (dated, but still relevant):</p>

<p>[Criticism</a> of College Rankings - September 23, 1996](<a href=“http://www.stanford.edu/dept/pres-provost/president/speeches/961206gcfallow.html]Criticism”>Criticism of College Rankings - September 23, 1996)</p>

<p>But even presidents of universities, chairs of departments, deans of schools, etc. all agree that departmental rankings make much more sense. That’s because a department is not as complex an entity as a university, and its quality is judged by mostly academic factors, without regard to the many other factors that would be relevant when choosing a university (such as student groups, study abroad, etc.). You can see the quality of a department by the faculty, the students, the postdocs, the researchers, the facilities, the curricula, the programs, the courses, the resources. These are what make up a department, and these factors can be pinpointed, unlike the more vague/flawed measures of US News (“alumni giving” and “value added”) and other rankings. The resulting rankings show why Stanford is among the very best in almost any subject, and why USC isn’t. (FWIW, for my field of study, USC is easily one of the top 5, ahead of schools like MIT; I respect it very much.)</p>

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<p>For the record, the faculty alone proves why Stanford is leaps and bounds ahead of USC. These are the faculty awards most often cited in comparing the faculty quality among schools - these are currently on faculty:</p>

<p>USC
National Academy of Science: 12
National Academy of Engineering: 35 [see [this](<a href=“http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/06/08/usc]this[/url]”>http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/06/08/usc)</a>]
American Academy of Arts & Sciences: 21
Institute of Medicine: 13
American Philosophical Society: 6
National Humanities Medal: 1
National Medal of Science: 1
National Medal of Technology: 1
Nobel: 3
Pulitzer: 0
MacArthur: 2</p>

<p>Stanford
150 National Academy of Science (12.5x as many)
94 National Academy of Engineering (2.7x using USC’s #, 4.3x using NAE’s)
263 American Academy of Arts and Sciences (12.5x)
64 Institute of Medicine (5x)
51 American Philosophical Society (8.5x)
2 National Humanities Medal (2x)
18 National Medal of Science (18x)
2 National Medal of Technology (2x)
17 Nobels (6x)
4 Pulitzer Prize
24 MacArthur (12x)</p>

<p>This doesn’t include countless other awards whose numbers USC does not publish, probably because no faculty hold those awards (like the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Wolf Prize, National Academy of Education, etc.). As you can see, Stanford’s faculty is far more distinguished, despite the fact that USC’s faculty is twice the size of Stanford’s.</p>