<p>That up and coming list is an odd bunch, not sure it is a badge of honor to be categorized with that group of schools.</p>
<p>@USCAlum05, I have a freshman son @ USC and and freshman daughter @ Northeastern. So I sure hope they keep up and coming!</p>
<p>In the US News link, if you type the name of the college in the box at the top right corner “find colleges”, you can see the acceptance rate for that college. UC Berkeley’s is about 17%, USC’s is about 19% and UCLA’s is about 20%.</p>
<p>On the positive side, USC has made the top 25 list for the past five consecutive years, when we debuted at 23. </p>
<p>Thanks for the up and coming list, Chem. That list is indicative of how the public perceives us so it’s marginally relevant.</p>
<p>If you really want to feel good, USC was ranked 41 on their 1999 edition.</p>
<p><a href=“http://web.archive.org/web/19981202210811/http://www8.usnews.com/usnews/edu/college/rankings/natunivs/natu_b2.htm”>http://web.archive.org/web/19981202210811/http://www8.usnews.com/usnews/edu/college/rankings/natunivs/natu_b2.htm</a></p>
<p>Cidzor, that’s exactly the point. USC has been climbing steadily and surely for the past 20 years now. The up and coming list features a number of schools all up and down the rankings that are doing some amazing things. If you study institutional change, it’s almost never the Harvards that create the most dramatic, effecting change. It’s schools down the ladder that are constantly scheming for new ways of doing things. For example, the University of Maryland - Baltimore County has had its president on Charlie Rose a few times to talk about their amazing, highly successful programs that are attracting more and more minority kids into STEM - graduating all sorts of competent minority scientists who are going on to PhD programs in high numbers. That sort of thing.</p>