^ It sounds like you never set foot on Penn.
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I applaud your valiant defense of old SC. Go back and re-read what I first wrote. USC is very strong at networking/alumni support and I believe that in the business world, that’s more often more important than a diploma from an elite school. In case there’s no reading confusion, this is my sincere compliments to USC and for that reason, I acknowledge their true advantage for students aspiring to be in California. I have nothing against the social aspect of the Greek system. I am one. I value the social aspects of it and my social skills developed during my days at Sigma Chi have served me well in the entertainment industry. My posts was to disagree with another person’s opinion that USC is more prestigious than USC. I just don’t see it. When this university prides itself for being one of the biggest private university in the country, I’m not sure they see the irony in that sales pitch…do you? Think about it.
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One side of USC’s campus is practically spilling over into the 110 Freeway. Geez.
Ignorant and uninformed people also think the University of Chicago is a public school, doesn’t make the school less prestigious. Outside of California, USC is sometimes mistaken for U. of South Carolina.
Oh, yes I have, several times. And one of my best friends went to Wharton. In fact, USC is a feeder school to Wharton MBA.
That said, let’s consider football. In the decades since I’ve graduated, I cannot tell you how much USC’s football program has opened doors in social settings and networking opportunities. From elites to the hoi polloi, USC has a name brand few schools can replicate. It’s good at both academics and athletics. USC has a huge alumni group in Seattle, and football is the glue that keeps our alumni school spirit alive and thriving. On my travels, from airport bars to the finest restaurants nationwide, especially during football season, my mentioning USC sparks engagement with other business travelers, leading to exchanged cards and networking opportunities.
And I guarantee that in 20 years USC will crack the top 20 in the rankings, in part because of athletics and USC’s fundraising prowess.
It is but it’s not in the top. Only 2.1%.
http://poetsandquants.com/2011/08/07/top-feeder-schools-to-whartons-mba-program/
13 out of 25, and ahead of Duke, Virginia, Michigan and UCLA, is very respectable.
Confused here - aren’t you just applying to the programs now versus deciding on either of them? Do you know you will be accepted? You would be amazed at the 4.6 type superstars either school can turn away in a given year particularly in CS.
If you compare opinions of students of each school, you will see that Penn students rate B and USC students rate B- for campus safety.
That’s because we on the West Coast have a far different perspective of what defines an unsafe area and a greater intolerance for anything other than the tidy and prevalent suburbs to which the vast majority of students are accustomed. The ghettos of the East Coast are more ubiquitous than out here and far more typical of the major cities, which are much older and decrepit than anything west of the Rockies. In short, Californians, Washingtonians and Oregonians in particular are spoiled with much higher – and perhaps unrealistic – standards when it comes to defining a marginal or unsafe area.
Funny. The safety score was rated by USC students, not by students from other colleges.
And students at UCLA, a school near USC rate their campus safety B+. Do they have the same West coast perspective? Furthermore, Penn students are from all states and from other countries in the world, not just from Philadelphia.
I totally get what Seattle TW is saying. Spending years in St. Louis then coming to CA where my kids grew up, they have a totally different perspective of what is a bad neighborhood or “ghetto.” They have never seen the neighborhoods that were common place in older midwest or east coast cities. To get to the ballpark in StL and other similar cities, many people make their way by areas that look like WWII just occurred with old brick buildings with blown out windows, or drive right by the projects. Didn’t phase me at the time. In the west coast, you have to go out of your way to find those places. What my kids think is the ghetto is so for off of reality. So to kids like them USC may seem like a “terrible” neighborhood when it is really just working class. With a strong amount of USC kids being from CA/west coast, they may be oblivious to those really bad neighborhoods. If you are from Seattle, you know a really clean city, so the area around USC would seem filthy, but it is more normal of a big city. So yes, a survey of this nature is more subjective than objective, that’s for sure.
I certainly have issues with safety and crime around the campus, and USC not investing enough to keep students safe, so I am not defending it outright. But I do get the misguided perspective of kids. They are giving UCLA - in the middle of Beverly Hills and Brentwood, where you get coffee at Starbucks on Rodeo Drive, for goodness sake, a B+ and not an A?? Seriously?
UCLA is 2.6 to 3.5 miles from Beverly Hills.
The first rating I quoted is from students review (without space) dot com.
Another site called colleges dot niche dot com has the same rating.
UCLA may be few miles away from Beverly Hills, but it’s next to Belair and Brentwood which are as affluent, if not more so, than 90210.
@coolweather, Anyone that has been to UCLA knows there isn’t any big dif between Westwood, Brentwood, Beverly Hills, Bel Air, Wilshire - all money, all over. Since 2/3 of students live within 5 miles of campus, most are within all those high end neighborhoods. There are very few campuses, if any, that can boast that kind of wealth surrounding every corner. So to call that campus a B of any kind is pretty crazy. It’s just today’s kids, mostly on the west coast living in their bubble world as mentioned in other posts that are taking the survey, very uninformed of the world outside of the world they live in.
There is a difference between residential properties and college campuses. Residential properties have security systems, neighborhood watch programs,… College campuses are open.
You will be surprised to see this report:
http://www.businessinsider.com/most-dangerous-colleges-in-america-2012-11#
That 4 year old survey and a zillion others are always regurgitated here,with each one offering a different perspective depending on who takes it or writes it. I also don’t put much into US News rankings either. Quality is in the eye of each individual. If we are talking desirability of campus, UCLA or USC wins hands down for those that favor sun and Socal and the LA scene, where Upenn is for those who like east coast and what it has to offer - meaning it is subjective, no survey can say one is better. Wasn’t OP asking about programs?
^ You totally missed the point. You said because UCLA is near Brentwood then it should have grade A in safety. The point here is there are crimes reported on UCLA campus. That’s why UCLA students rate their campus safety B+. I did not say UCLA has the highest crime rate. Some schools don’t report crimes or don’t report enough. The article mentioned that.
The other poster claimed USC is safer than Penn (the main reason he/she did not chose Penn). I just pointed out that’s not true.
Seriously, have you been to west Philly or even Temple in north Philly, an even more dangerous area? I have. To the West Coast affluent kids: those areas are more dangerous than Watts or Compton. They are replete with centuries-old and decaying brick buildings and houses, little to no green space, cramped row houses with boarded windows and iron railings, and a soaring murder rate. These places look like a bombed out city in Iraq. By comparison, Watts consists of single family homes with, guess what? YARDS and grass. But don’t take my word for it, Google it: http://ghettoamerica.blogspot.com/2006/04/philadelphia.html?m=1
Whether or not this is true, and I don’t think it is, you’re missing the point. Demand-side prestige is different from supply-side prestige. Airbnb is currently attracting the absolute cream of the crop of engineering and design talent.
Excellent. Top employers in California recognize that both schools produce strong graduates, but also recognize that Penn is a more prestigious school. By top employers, I mean the aforementioned tech companies, plus every top financial firm with a California office (Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Silver Lake, Blackstone, Evercore, Houlihan Lokey, etc.). I literally don’t care if grandparents in California conflate Penn and Penn State. The original poster doesn’t, either. He cares about job prospects, and while they’re strong out of both schools, Penn has the upper hand (even moreso if he/she gets into M&T).
As for SC alumni that hire? Besides the fact that Penn trumps USC at the above companies, the tech companies take huge precautions to proactively avoid hiring bias.
If you’re talking about finance, Penn still trumps Stanford and then some. And that’s because Stanford economics is a strong economics degree, while Wharton finance is a strong finance degree.
This may or may not be true, but it is irrelevant for the OP.
You seem out of touch. I don’t know if that was true when you last visited Penn, but it’s extraordinarily false now.
- That is from nine years ago. Believe it or not, Philadelphia has cleaned up since then.
- That is **nothing** like the area surrounding Penn. The only direction where things get even remotely not-amaizngly-gentrified is west campus. Let's go through some pictures.
https://philadelphiaheights.files.■■■■■■■■■■■■■/2013/03/001.jpg - 40th and Walnut
http://uchs.net/blogs/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/11.jpg - 43rd and Chestnut
https://farm5.static.■■■■■■■■■■/4098/4930559117_588f3a193b.jpg - 45th and Locust
http://www.phillyliving.com/images/blogs/2013/04/DSC_73131.jpg - 50th and Baltimore
I have no idea what USC is like, but I graduated from Penn, and I can’t say that I can relate at all to what you’re saying. Yes, there are bad parts of Philadelphia, but they are so far from Penn that they literally are not relevant to Penn students.
Keasbey, it looks like you’re assuming the same obsession with school prestige that exists among many the northeastern part of the country exists on the west coast. If that’s the case, then it’s incorrect. I live and work in the San Francisco/Silicon Valley area. Years ago where you went to school mattered if you wanted to get funding for a new start-up, mostly because of available connections between certain schools and investors. It’s not nearly as important these days. It’s so easy to start a company on a shoestring now, and there have been so many success stories from people who went to nondescript schools, that everyone’s learned graduating from a prestigious school isn’t required.
I don’t think safety is an issue at either school. People always exaggerate the dangers of the neighborhood surrounding USC, and I’m sure they do the same thing with the area around Penn. I walked around the Penn campus and its environs about 20 years ago, and thought it was typical of lots of urban areas near college campuses.
Really, either school will afford plenty of opportunities in Silicon Valley.
This link gives a better perspective on top feeders to top Business Graduate Schools:
- Harvard
- Penn
- Stanford