<p>Oh my god, zenkoan, did your monocle fall out as you typed that second-to-last post? Christ.</p>
<p>Almost, BandTen–the Gulfstream hit a bit of turbulence over the Seychelles, causing my top hat to slide down perilously close to the monocle. Would love to chat more, Old Chap, but deadlines beckon. ; )</p>
<p>@ewho,
Thanks and congrats to you and your son. Working for Google, Wow!</p>
<p>davev61, I’m happy to see someone else who chose Stanford over the Trustee Scholarship as it helps me know that we were not the only crazy ones. Fortunately, Stanford’s review of our FA package did result in a large change for this first year at least. We have 3 in college for one year and know that the Aid package will disappear after the first year so it was a tough decision to turn down a 4 year guaranteed scholarship to a great university. But Stanford was my S’s first choice from the beginning. We were unable to attend either admit day due to other conflicts but after attending the local receptions it made the choice even more difficult. Both are great universities but it really came down to where he felt most comfortable. As a Trojan alum, myself, it was tough to see him turn down USC but I knew it was the right decision for him. He’s the one that will spend the next four years at university. USC wasn’t even near the top of his list until the Trustee Scholarship was awarded so that sort of says it all about where his heart belongs. Congrats on your D’s decision.</p>
<p>Since docfreedaddy first started posting, it was obvious that he was biased in favor of USC but pretended to be even-handed. The more he talks about Stanford, the more he shows that he’s trying to convince himself - by trying to convince others - that USC is just as good or better than Stanford. Cognitive dissonance at its best.</p>
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<p>= evidence that he is seeing what he wants to see. In reality, the main quad buildings are continually renovated, many of them recently at a very high price (they had to be gutted and reinforced with steel). Anyone who has been in the main quad can see that the facilities are very nice. Of course many of the engineering buildings will seem shiny and new - they were just built! It’s hard to see how the humanities could be a “stepchild” when there’s an overcommitment of faculty - i.e. more faculty than would be necessary given student demand. The humanities rely almost completely on university endowment for operations, so it’s not like the university treats them poorly. ;)</p>
<p>US News is a ballot-like rating, but the NRC rankings are not. In the S-ranking for communication, Stanford is rated 1-3 (the highest of all comm programs); USC, 17-37. The other NRC rankings for humanities also show that Stanford is far ahead of USC. Not even USC administrators would say their humanities departments can compare to Stanford’s (the #1 school in the world for humanities).</p>
<p>Criticizing Stanford for someone there mentioning US News rankings is absurd, esp. when USC is absolutely obsessed with rankings. Anyone can read about this online straight the horse’s mouth - USC is unashamedly driven by rankings and repeatedly sets goals for where it will be ranked and by what year, etc. Stanford doesn’t have that attitude, because it doesn’t need to - it’s ranked high by doing what it does naturally.</p>
<p>It’s also hilarious to me that docfreedaddy is trying to tell others about graciousness. What’s gracious about going on the Stanford forum just to put others down - “your campus is boring,” “your students are rude,” “your humanities suck in comparison”? Priceless.</p>
<p>Phantasmagoric–This is a public site. My intentions have been quite clear. You and others have witnessed a problem solving approach to reconcile my biases with my observations and firsthand experience to perform my due diligence as parent for a very special daughter I love who had narrowed many excellent college choice to two. i expect other parents and students may find them selves in a similar position in the future and look to this board for guidance. It is with them in mind that I am responding.</p>
<p>Yes, I had biases, strong ones. I chided my daughter for applying to USC when she told me she did. My knowledge base was from years ago. The Trustee Finalist designation that came with the acceptance required that the 375 Finalists and their parents spend a weekend at USC with a full two day schedule of colloquia, presentations, informal contact with faculty and students and time to just wander around and meet students. I begrudgingly went. I was shocked by the quality of the faculty, provost, deans, students and particular programs. The entire campus, student and faculty were vibrant and engaged. it was impossible to retain my bias and prejudice.</p>
<p>If my daughter had not applied to USC, she would be at Stanford. I posted my experience and received a number of balanced responses. I read those from you and a few of your cronies which disproportionately focused on ratings/rankings. That did encourage me to review rankings, appreciate how influential, but truly limited and untested from a measurement science perspective (concurrent and predictive validity) for undergraduate education rankings are. </p>
<p>I do think the tone and perspective of your writings and others is revealing and hope it does not go unnoticed for any parents or students in the future. I encourage all to understand thoroughly the limitations of rankings, especially in contrast to the power they hold at present. I think it is most interesting that what I learned most from the few dominant posters is not how Stanford personally inspired anyone or touched their lives and was special to them, but that it is special because of its graduate rankings.</p>
<p>I am pleased and proud of my daughter for not being swayed by reputation, but painstakingly evaluating which environment offered her, overall, the most inspiring and beneficial setting to develop her gifts. I wish the same for all other parents and students.</p>
<p>Aside from rankings, not every college is a fit for everyone.</p>
<p>I also tend to agree that instead of throwing a ‘no way’ thread in a college website(and that is happening at all the other college sites as well), it is important to remember that these sites are primarily dominated by students who think of this as their dream schools. Or are looking forward to attending these schools next Fall. When people throw in these negativity, it causes a damper on current applicants, current students and future students.</p>
<p>I agree with the poster that said - ok, Stanford or (you can put whatever name) offered you admission. You decided that something else is better fit for you financially and socially. Ok…move on, no need to now come back and bring out the negatives that swayed you. Students AND parents need to remember the sensitive nature of these postings and how it affects current applicants and admitted teenagers who are already struggling with college indecisions.</p>
<p>[The</a> Audacity of USC | Spring 2012 | Trojan Family Magazine](<a href=“http://tfm.usc.edu/spring-2012/the-audacity-of-usc/]The”>http://tfm.usc.edu/spring-2012/the-audacity-of-usc/)</p>
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Looks like they’re gonna focus on grad programs and faculty more than pushing for better undergrad…undergrad can improve rankings only so much.</p>
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But it’ll probably take them about a century to get there…</p>
<p>@smilldeb,</p>
<p>Thanks and congrats to you and your S. Anyway, I really understand how difficult a decision it must be for you and you S, we are pretty much in the same boat. Trustee or Mork scholarship is a really big deal, but I do not want my D to deal with “what if …” question later on in life. She earns it, that is how I see it. But I got to give you props for being able to send three kids to college. I am sure they appreciate it and will make the best out of the experience…</p>
<p>docfreedaddy,</p>
<p>Nobody has ever implied that Stanford is special because of subject rankings - that’s not what inspires or touches students. The subject rankings were presented to you after you made some pretty absurd claims, e.g. in one of your first posts, you were casting doubt on the strength of Stanford’s humanities departments. Several pages later, you still hold onto that absurd bias. You keep railing against undergraduate rankings when not one Stanford poster here has used them as evidence. We’ve even said to you that nobody cares about these undergraduate university rankings and that we too have the same criticisms, yet you continue to assert that we put stock in said rankings. Nobody does. Further, you aren’t even holding USC to the same standard - people there care far more about rankings, as its administration has engaged in it a lot and can’t seem to go five minutes without mentioning rankings and how USC has “gone up 1 spot since last year!!” Yet this somehow gets past you.</p>
<p>I think it’s rather telling that of your 45 posts on this site, only one is in the USC forum. Nearly all are in the Stanford forum, and nearly all proclaim how USC is in some way better than or equal to Stanford (more the former), including that one post in the USC forum. If you really believed that, one would think you’d spend more time engaging with the USC forum - but no, most of your efforts are spent here trying to convince Stanford posters that USC is better than or equal to Stanford. When we called you out on your assertions, you continually evaded lines of debate, patronized us, and attempted to maintain the illusion (delusion, rather) that you’re even-handed, just here to get information, etc. Your real motives have been clear for quite a while; your bias has also been painfully obvious. Nobody is fooled. </p>
<p>I’m willing to bet anything that if USC and Stanford cost the same, you would not be expending so much effort pumping up USC and railing against Stanford. I’m sure your daughter will have a great time at USC, and that USC offers a lot. You don’t need to keep trying to convince us of USC’s greatness - you seemed to have convinced yourself of that, so mission successful. ;)</p>
<p>Best of luck to your D at USC :)</p>
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<p>Oh man this cracks me up. *No *top university explicitly endeavors to be “the greatest research university of this century” - at most, they say “one of the greatest.” USC is developing a hilariously sad case of delusions of grandeur. It’s the sort of thing where anyone with knowledge of academia has some second-hand embarrassment just hearing it.</p>
<p>And yes, docfreedaddy, I’m being harsh, and intentionally so - USC deserves it. I would cringe if I heard a Stanford administrator say that.</p>
<p>fall2016parent–I fully agree with your comment. Even though this is a Stanford cite, I am surprised at the vehemence of criticism for USC in this case to the extent of being absurd. Students coming to these cites and parents deserve balanced responses. For instance a previous post raised the tragic violence that occurred near USC and cited crime statistics as evidence that Stanford and Palo Alto are better choices. However, any university in a city, Columbia in NYC, Yale in Hew Haven, U of P will be in areas of higher crime than Palo Alto, but a sense of balance would also at least give lip service to richness of culture and range of enriching opportunities for an undergraduate a vibrant city would offer relative to the critique to Palo Alto offered by Stanford students. I personably believe that it is a valuable maturing process for a student to be able to be drawn to a dream school, but receive assistance to measure it against the reality of what it is discerned to be and appears to offer to them.</p>
<p>^ that “previous poster” who brought up the recent robberies at USC is fall2016parent. 
Someone pointed out in the next post that this sort of thing happens at every urban campus. I then pointed out that it’s undeniable that some areas are more dangerous than others. There was plenty of “balance” in that line of discussion. He/she was asking whether anyone was “worried about the spur of incidences around USC,” not about the cultural offerings of a city.</p>
<p>Phantasmagoric–I was much impressed with the letter a former Stanford Provost or president wrote to USNWR critical of their rankings. This past admit weekend at the seminal presentation by the current provost in Memorial Chapel, Stanford’s rankings were a cornerstone of the provost’s talk. He mentioned Stanford’s rankings twice and with dramatic pauses and emphasis the standings for all departments. Nowhere was there the a caution or attempt to educate an impressionable audience that the rankings are based on graduate school rankings, what the bases for the rankings are or the question of untested validity. Why the change in the administration’s perspective? It is simply unfair to cite USC admin’s attention to ranking, which was not present in my contact with USC as it was at Stanford, and not be mindful of your present administration’s central focus in his keynote address and presumably elsewhere. </p>
<p>I see numerous references to the graduate rankings above and Stanford’s standing from the vocal core on this blog, so I am not sure what you are referring to in saying they are not “used as evidence” here as well.</p>
<p>As far as comparison of specific programs, I offered links to the Stanford Communications and SLE programs (the latter I appreciate learning about on this forum) and invited comparison to the USC Annenberg journalism and communications undergraduate program and the Thematic Options Honors program. Suggesting that an informed and critical appraisal of the programs be initiated by anyone truly interested is “casting doubt” is simply not accurate. I emphasized that the web pages comport with the presentations from the respective programs and contact with program administrators students and faculty I took part in. The goal, if not for you, is for others to examine in depth, rather than accept generalities, cursory impressions or worse biases or judgements formed on “rankings” alone.</p>
<p>I posted on the Stanford cite because my disquiet was with Stanford. USC far exceeded my expectations for the areas of interest and I had no lingerings issues to try to resolve there. I very much would have wanted my daughter to attend Stanford–closer to home, great reputation, and was hoping to find the key to remove the doubt and concern borne from firsthand experience. </p>
<p>I have no interest in debating which is a better university. My goal was to combine whatever could be gained from this website with discussions with close friends who currently have students at Stanford (none at USC), my own experiences at Stanford in the service of identifying which of two settings would offer the richest environment for my daughter to develop her skills and interests. In the end it was not Stanford. Am I surprised, yes, given my preconceptions. Does this take anything away from Stanford. Absolutely not and I am please that it will open the door to another deserving student on the wait list who hopefully, with their family, have diligently and thoroughly investigated their top choices and conclude Stanford is best for them. I hope it has been a good learning experience for all.</p>
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<p>Funny - one person mentions rankings and apparently it’s a “central focus” of the entire administration (and the “cornerstone” of his talk - when he mentioned it… twice). I’m willing to bet that one of the rankings that the provost referenced was from THE, which recently put Stanford at #1 in the world for humanities, edging out Harvard - quite an accomplishment.</p>
<p>In general, admins don’t mention rankings and have repeatedly downplayed them. USC on the other hand does not, and if you don’t believe me, I can show you plenty of sources straight from the horse’s mouth where USC admins trumpet rankings and emphasize their need to get into the top X or top Y.</p>
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<p>I said: “You keep railing against undergraduate rankings when not one Stanford poster here has used them as evidence.” Your efforts to be sly are not going unnoticed.</p>
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<p>Yes, you invited comparison, then immediately went on to proclaim that “Stanford pales in comparison to USC in the humanities and journalism/communications areas.”</p>
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<p>Really? You’ve now said multiple times that Stanford “pales in comparison in the humanities.” Isn’t that casting doubt? “Critical appraisal” is right - you’re being overly critical of Stanford’s humanities because you’re trying to prove to yourself that USC is better. Not even USC faculty/admins are arrogant enough to say that USC’s humanities are on Stanford’s level, much less better. They know USC doesn’t match Stanford in this respect right now, but are determined to change that, which is admirable. But they aren’t going to stick their heads in the sand and pretend that USC is better than Stanford right now for humanities - that would be absurd.</p>
<p>There’s no need for idle speculation and innuendo about ‘certain neighborhoods’ when you’re talking about campus crime… they do publish statistics on these things:</p>
<p>[SUDPS</a> - Reporting Crime & Suspicious Activity](<a href=“http://www.stanford.edu/group/SUDPS/safety-report/toc.shtml]SUDPS”>http://www.stanford.edu/group/SUDPS/safety-report/toc.shtml)
[CAPS</a> Website](<a href=“http://capsnet.usc.edu/dps/asr/index.cfm]CAPS”>http://capsnet.usc.edu/dps/asr/index.cfm)</p>
<p>Personally I would rule out Stanford for writing the name of their university in, ugh, Papyrus.</p>
<p>“Funny - one person mentions rankings and apparently it’s a “central focus” of the entire administration (and the “cornerstone” of his talk - when he mentioned it… twice)”</p>
<p>When the one person extolling Stanford’s rankings is the Provost and he does so during the admit weekend keynote address in the Memorial Chapel to admitted parents and students that is extremely significant. I would encourage you to obtain a copy of the address or if it was videoed, review it to see for yourself the Provost’s dramatic emphasis on rankings. At present, you simply seem argumentative and exceedingly biased. I think we both have provided enough of a sample of our perspectives and motivations for other individuals in the same position I was in to make their own judgements about the usefulness of our posts and what they might say about the various schools.</p>
<p>I will again say cost is not a factor for me. I don’t qualify for financial aid, like Stanford, none of the other schools she was accepted to offer trustee awards. I hd no idea USC offered a merit award and to me at the time of application based on the little I knew, USC was not a serious consideration. USC had no merit award application, but just culled the applications and named Finalists. I value education highly. My daughter has been in private school since kindergarten. I have been and am more than happy to support private education as well as public education for various districts through property taxes. </p>
<p>As I have said, the decision was my daughter’s. She knows tuition is not a financial burden for us and was not a factor in her decision. Your comment to the contrary further seems to separate your objectives in any discourse we have from mine and as often said in other contexts, I take yours and others with similar comments to be your own and not to reflect on the fine institution Stanford is.</p>
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<p>No, it isn’t.</p>
<p>It’s extremely significant when it’s a pattern of behavior. That isn’t the case here. It is the case, however, at USC.</p>
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<p>Yes, people can see that you continually make false or misleading claims that you refuse to substantiate, and when called out or backed into a corner, you simply ignore the evidence that proved you wrong. In fact, several times throughout this thread, you didn’t bother replying to posts/claims that presented such evidence. </p>
<p>And yet again you claim others are biased while sidestepping the obvious fact that you’re strongly biased in favor of USC. The difference is, reality is biased in favor of Stanford.</p>
<p>phantasmagoric–attempting to minimize the significance of your Provost speaking from prepared remarks at a gathering of newly admitted students and parents in the Memorial Chapel in the weekend keynote address is absurd and a substantial distortion of the significance of the Provost’s position and what he said.</p>
<p>In that vein, I can certainly understand how you, or a like behaving cohort, would view anything I wrote as an unsubstantiated claim. Fortunately, all is available for anyone to review. This is not a high school debate. I did choose to ignore comments that were incendiary, arrogant, pedantic and not seemingly related to having an instructive discourse to illuminate some questions that I thought were vital to my daughter’s decision and presumably will be to others in the future in a similar position.</p>
<p>It would seem you will not be satisfied unless you “win” some debate I have not been having with you. If so, I will concede that what I experienced through a focused investigation of each undergraduate program in the non-science areas that interested my daughter was not “real”, the perceptions my daughter came away with were not “real”, I imagined Memorial Chapel was filled to the brim with admitted students and their parents listening as your Provost spoke and in fact reality is just how you see it for me and everyone else. I can live with that.</p>
<p>It’s only you who is choosing to read that much into two remarks from the provost in a single speech. From that, you’re concluding that it’s “central to the administration” - but it’s not as though those two remarks were the focus of his entire speech, nor does he represent the entire administration, nor is it a pattern. Do you see why it’s absurd to generalize from this small instance? I can point you to tons of instances of USC’s administration showing their obsession with rankings. Now that’s a pattern.</p>
<p>You also ignored plenty of non-combative comments presenting evidence contrary to your assertions. It’s hard to take you seriously when your reasons for believing what you do include such illustrative experiences like “the campus was boring when I briefly visited over the summer” and “look at the websites! USC’s is better.”</p>
<p>It’s funny that you assert that you haven’t been having a debate with me (or others, presumably), when you just spent no fewer than 12 paragraphs replying to me and others on this page alone. This back-and-forth certainly isn’t some idle conversation over tea. ;)</p>