<p>The only reason the USC name carries "a lot of weight" is because of its football program. The so-called "SC connection" begins to diminish east of San Bernardino County.</p>
<p>it was a pretty prestigious name where i grew up in northern california. i can't really speak for its reputation in the rest of the country yet. probably not too well reguarded academically outside of california, but you never know.</p>
<p>caltech definetely deserves respect. although stanford is better overall, caltech shouldn't get dissed because of that. it is a highly respectable institution that yields many nobel prize winners</p>
<p>Best Ganja
1) Humboldt State</p>
<ol>
<li><p>USNWR does try to measure academic quality of undergrads education, in some sense, since it is very hard to do, at least harder than internet yahoos think it is. Have you seen "peer assessment", "class size", or numbers about faculty?</p></li>
<li><p>USC is doing massive faculty overhaul, sorta. It is known in academia. Listening to the posters on CC talking about academics, you may get confused about what academics they are talking about (or are they really informed enough to make bold statements). It looks different than the people in academia think.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>best cal state name to confuse others:</p>
<p>Cal Poly Pomona</p>
<p>not only does it have "cal poly" as in cal poly SLO but it also has "pomona" as in pomona college. hehe. of course, cal poly pomona is just about as good as cal state fullerton.</p>
<p>USC is simply overrated, that's a fact. I've never heard of my parents' friends seeing many, substantial, quality papers published by USC faculty (this comes from 2 doctors, 3 engineers, 2 authors, 1 journalist, and 2 biology/chemistry PhD's). Of course that doesn't mean that USC is bad in academics, it's just that other universities deserve to be ranked higher than USC on the level of academics (i.e. UC San Diego).</p>
<p>Overall Academics:
1) Stanford
2) UC Berkeley
3) UCLA
4) UCSD
5) USC (it may not have the "intellectual-bookish" reputation, but it has strong programs in many fields: medicine, communications, business, film, etc...and it has an active alumni network and is well-respected by many higher-ups in the working world especially in Southern California) </p>
<p>Sciences
1) Cal Tech
2) Harvey Mudd
3) UCSD</p>
<p>Party Schools
1) Chico State
2) UCSB
3) SDSU
4) Cal Poly SLO</p>
<p>Liberal Arts
1) Pomona College
2) Claremont McKenna College
3) Pitzer College
4) Scripps College
(Basically all the Claremont Colleges)</p>
<p>Please don't mistake fact with what you've known, or heard of. </p>
<p>Academics is really a fuzzy notion here, and abused by many "authoritative" CC posters. UCSD may be just good at your areas, such as Science/BIO, or some part of engineering. Other than that ... </p>
<p>You have to remind you every so often that you are still living in a small world as every body else. I am working with dozens of PhDs, and I still do not have ability to judge which school is poor at academics. More, fear!</p>
<p>Cal Poly SLO's rep. seems to be better in the Bay Area. Most of the students from socal say others down there think it's "just another cal state," while people from the bay area think it's even with or better than SB and Davis. Interesting discrepency, and I'm not sure of the reason. Oh and here are my rankings:</p>
<p>Reputation(Don't really want to speak for actual academics since I've only attended two of these schools):</p>
<ol>
<li>Stanford</li>
<li>Cal Tech</li>
<li>Cal Berkeley</li>
<li>UCLA</li>
<li>UCSD</li>
<li>USC</li>
<li>Cal Poly/SB/Davis</li>
</ol>
<p>For academics, UCLA > USC.
This is undisputed.</p>
<p>pixies... berkeley and stanford are both VERY VERY STRONG in science. (Berk's chem and physics departments?...)</p>
<p>the usc name carries a lot of weight.</p>
<p>Only within a 5 mile radius of the school (a little exaggeration, but you get the idea). Unless you're in LA or Orange Counties, it really doesn't have much weight. As opposed to Stanford, Berkeley, and UCLA, which have name recognition nation-wide (as well as internationally).</p>
<p>although USC may not get a lot of weight nationwide (what? university of south carolina?), and im under the impression that USC doesn't have a strong international reputation either, i always wonder how does a school like USC (and NYU) attract so many international students? perhaps it has something to do with the location (LA/NY), as UCLA has a lot of international students as well.</p>
<p>USC's name is famous because of football. It's a good school, but does not deserve to be up there with CalTech, Stanford, Berkeley, and UCLA. Even UCSD, UCSB, UCD, and UCI are on par or better than USC academically.</p>
<p>I should know better then to get involved in this, but actually USC is getting both massive faculty and student overhauls. I can't compare it to other CA colleges since I'm known very little about west coast schools.</p>
<p>Consider the following:</p>
<p>From 1993-2003 USC raised $3,000,000,000. From the fall of 1991 to the fall of 2004, the average SAT scores went from 1070 to approximately 1370 for 2004-2005. For 2003-2004, the middle 50% of entering students had scores between 1270 and 1420, and for admits the scores were 1300 to 1430. USC states that they have higher mean SAT averages than UCLA and UCB. The College of Arts, Letters, and Science is in the process of hiring 100 new senior faculty outstanding professors from around the world who will increase the number of faculty in the College by 25 percent. I know that USC recently hired two Associate Professors from what is supposed to be the countrys best sociology department here at UW. The Keck School of Medicine is planning to hire 135 new research faculty. USC is building a new $50,000,000 (I think thats the cost) basketball arena. Electronic Arts recently gave USC 8 mil to start a gaming program and just this month USC filled the endowed chair in the film school for interactive gaming established by EA.</p>
<p>Look, I know most people on this board really hate USC but face it, it's a much better school, and getting better every year, than some people want to believe. Its climb up the USNWR rankings has been earned. The faculty is better, the students are better, it has a beautiful campus, and it's rolling in money. So whats the problem?</p>
<p>UCLA is better than USC. Period. Comparing the two would be a travesty.
And UCLA and UCB's middle 50% is still higher. UCLA raises about 3 billion a YEAR. As a Berkeley Student, I do consider UCLA kin, especially when compared to the privates.</p>
<p>So your saying that UCLA raised $30,000,000,000 from private donors in the last 10 years? Quite a feat.</p>
<p>USC received $585,161,932 in private funds in 2003. It was the sixth largest amount of charitable gifts in the US that year and the highest for any university. Harvard received $477,617,144 in private support, which ranked it 13. Stanford was 14. UCLA with $282,343,369 was 28. Pretty good, but not 3 bil a year.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0770757.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0770757.html</a></p>
<p>Incidentially, by "better" I didn't mean better than UCLA or UCB but "better" then they used to be and getting "better" all the time. Sounds like an old rock song.</p>
<p>You got almost everything misinformed after that "period".</p>
<p>3 billion a year?? I did hear 3 bil is their goal for next 10 years or so. If they got anything close to that, UCLA would start normal faculty recruiting. They are not, and that is one of the reasons a USC position is hotter than before. </p>
<p>mid 50%? I read a comparison somewhere, but can not find now.</p>
<p>I do think UCLA is still better than USC in general, but people from UCLA need to find evidence to prove that, besides science and bio major.</p>