US News Rankings 2011

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Southern California
81

<p>A bit of an overstatement to claim a correlation between making lots of money and educational excellence. I can think of a few very rich guys in hi tech fields that are college drop-outs. One could also speculate that due to location and other factors, USC has a high percentage of people that are in big money areas like entertainment, and/or that they have a higher percentage of people that start with lots of family money, always an advantage. It is a bit facile to claim that the number of wealthy people from a school is a marker for how good the school is, intellectually.</p>

<p>Having said all that, USC is an excellent school, no two ways about it.</p>

82

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<p>Thanks for keeping it civil. The rankings I cited are their departmental rankings (or in the last few cases, NRC). Same company, different (and separate) rankings.</p>

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<p>No they don’t. The peer assessment is a stand alone survey. It has nothing to do with their departemental rankings.</p>

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<p>Private schools also build their science departments using taxpayer dollars. Both sets of schools are fairly interested in return, otherwise they would no longer receive funding. But again, end result is the only thing that matters. You don’t get points for using private donations instead of government grants.</p>

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<p>Perhaps, but that doesn’t mean they have a vote in the Peer Assessment. If you’re interested, you could compare the number of graduates of UCLA and USC that are college presidents. I personally doubt that anything near enough of a difference to affect the PA results, but I could be wrong.</p>

83

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<p>UCLA med school is something like 8th? USC is 34th. That’s a pretty significant difference if you ask me. However, USC’s dental school is far superior to UCLA’s (my dentist and orthodontist both graduated from there )</p>

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You might want to check out the Business forums on CC. Marshall isn’t even in the top 10. It’s a good school, but it’s a regional school and a Marshall degree doesn’t hold that much weight outside of California. Really the only undergraduate Business degrees worth anything are those from UPenn which is in a league of its own, and MIT, Haas, Ross, McIntire and NYU. Those are the target schools. USC-Marshall is a soft semi-target. It’s a great school, don’t get me wrong, but it’s nowhere near the same caliber as schools in the top 3.</p>

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You don’t understand his point? Try re-reading this, I’ll repost it for convenience
vvvv</p>

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You must’ve missed the above post. It’s ok, I brought it back for you. See above ^^^^</p>

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No, but you might want to check out the Business forums. </p>

<p>Here’s a list of target schools for recruitment

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<p>USC isn’t on this list. However, if it was a list of recruitment/target schools in California, then USC – Marshall would be in the top 3, no doubt.</p>

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Uhhhh, I don’t know where you’re getting this statistic, but I’m sure if UCLA/Cal both superscored their SATs like USC (and all privates do), UCLA/Cal would both be higher.</p>

84

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UCLA’s dental school is a tier stronger. There are no formal dental school rankings, but based on DAT scores, UCLA has the third highest in the nation behind only Harvard and Columbia.</p>

<p>[Dental</a> School Statistics - DAT, GPA, and Average Application Stats](<a href=“http://www.dentalstudentbooks.com/dental_school_statistics.html]Dental”>http://www.dentalstudentbooks.com/dental_school_statistics.html)</p>

<p>UCLA Dental’s average GPA is also much higher than USC’s.</p>

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Marshall is the #10 undergraduate business school.</p>

<p>[Best</a> Undergraduate Business Programs - Best Colleges - Education - US News and World Report](<a href=“http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/spec-business]Best”>http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/spec-business) </p>

<p>USC shows strength as an undergraduate university but the only graduate department that ranks highly I think is their engineering which is #10. (Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.)</p>

85

<p>WE BEAT UCLA!!! WOOT</p>

<p>[National</a> Universities Rankings - Best College - Education - US News](<a href=“http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/national-universities-rankings/page+2]National”>http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/national-universities-rankings/page+2)</p>

86

<p>Woot! Congrats USC!</p>

87

<p>i dont know why rankings matter soo much to everyone. Both are amazing schools, and Los Angeles is lucky to have both schools within its city limit. It doesn’t matter where you go to get your education, it matters what you do - that’s what success is based on. A lot of famous inventors and American businessmen didn’t even go to college (or are college drop-outs), yet they became successful because of what they did.
Both universities are strong and their quality of education are amazing, so rankings … not that important.</p>

88

<p>As the father of a California private school senior who has visited both UCLA and USC with my son in the past year, I found that he resonated more with USC, and much to my surprise, so did I. I have a few points to make that hopefully, others will find interesting:</p>

<ol>
<li>I am old enough to have used the Cass & Birnbaum “Comparative Guides to American Colleges” when I was choosing colleges 42 years ago. Here is what they said about USC at that moment, in the mid-1960s:</li>
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<p>“Long famous for its championship football teams, USC is now searching for academic talent with a vigor comparable to that with which gridiron heroes are sought. The University has undertaken the difficult task of transforming itself—a large, diverse urban institution with many graduate and professional schools–into a major center for scholarly, intellectual, cultural and artistic affairs…Difficulties encountered in attempting to reshape USC, however, have been intensified by the large proportion of commuting students and the many part-time faculty. But both the proportions of of commuters and of part-time faculty are being reduced.”</p>

<p>I would say that USC has done a phenomenal job of engineering that transformation, and the process is obviously in high gear, 42 years later.</p>

<ol>
<li>The graduating seniors in his school, which is one of the top independent day schools in the US, have chosen to matriculate at USC at a much higher level than UCLA in the past three years. His college counselor told us that he considers USC to be very similar to Penn, an observation my son and I shared after visits to both schools, in terms of the “feel” of the campuses, the heavy professional school emphasis, and the kinds of students we are seeing winding up at either school. The counselor also said that in ten to fifteen years, people will see that USC alumni will be providing more of the leadership in this state that in the past was supplied by Berkeley and UCLA. </li>
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<p>I had reluctantly agreed to take my son to USC, because I bought into the stereotype that it was mostly a football-and-party school, and that if he were to study in LA, it ought to be at UCLA or Occidental. After that visit and lots of research afterward, he and I would give preference to USC over either UCLA or Oxy.</p>

89

<p>What great history! Thanks, morganhil.</p>

<p>Your family sounds a lot like ours - we included USC on our Southern California college tour only because we could squeeze in a visit between Oxy and UCLA. We are SO glad we did!</p>

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<p>Morganhil,</p>

<p>Good observation and analogy of USC to Penn. I have been saying the same thing for the many years I was at USC. USC’s goal should be a west coast Penn, not Harvard/Columbia, nor Stanford. IMO, USC graduates are providing equal or more leaderships in this state than UCLA already, but can not touch Berkeley and Stanford yet. Compared to UCLA, USC still lacks contribution in academic areas, such as pure scientific research, medical research and education. Those things take longer time to catch up, but I have hope for our new administration.</p>

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<p>As someone from Philly who is very familiar with Penn I whole heartedly agree with the Penn-USC comparison in terms of campus feel</p>

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<p>Been scoping the UCLA board. All of a sudden rankings don’t mean anything in Westwood.</p>

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<p>Also, when did they USC website change?</p>

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<p>Could anyone elaborate what does “Penn feel” mean vs “Harvard/Columb” feel?</p>

<p>–> more leadership community activities and less pure academic research?</p>

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<p>SC still has a longggg way to go to reach Stanford-Berkeley even UCLA’s
level in pure academic research (the Nobel Prize type…even UCLA has 10?
USC has only 1, and that could take another 20-30 years to catch up),</p>

<p>also because SC’s always stronger in professional schools than pure academic schools,
as Nobel prize mostly awarded in pure academic physics, chem, bio, econ, literature,
but never in film, business, engineering, communication journalism, or dental and such…</p>

96

<p>UCLA has 5. There has been a shift in academia towards more applied research - research that can be directly transferred to practical applications that benefit society. USC has been on the cutting edge in this regard. While fundamental research is important (which is the basis for the Nobel - and USC has dramatically increased its research portfolio in basic research), it is the applied and translational discoveries that are becoming more important and relevant - and USC is at the forefront here.</p>

97

<p>Yes Nobel prizes, and not just Heismen.</p>

<p>If Nobel prizes even really have much to do with undergrad studies
or counted in this undergrad ranking methodology that is…</p>

<p>This passing UCLA is an important milestone and first step for SC’s
unprecedented surge. It no way proves SC’s better than UCLA because
it’s supposed to be ranked higher anyway being a private school,
but does prove SC’s stellar rise to be at least on par with.</p>

<p>But over longer term, as a private school
in this heavily-private-school-favored-USnews-rank-system,
SC should go further into at least Top20 or Top15 to
prove its status of reaching true elite (however years that could take,
because the higher goes, more difficult could become…)</p>

<p>Without any disrespect, but if quality private schools as
Duke, Vander, Rice, Wash St Louis, Notre Dame, Emory,
(or to stretch it further even IvyBrown and Hopkins)
can be in Top20, and Duke even in Top10,
not any reason why USC can’t be recognized in the same level
given SC’s quality, $resources, prime LA location, alumni bonding,
management vision and focus.</p>

98

<p>I don’t know much about US News history, but
has any other school risen from 51 to 23 (and keep rising)
within 20 years span before?</p>

<p>Religiously devoted stubborn SC bashers plentiful out there can still keep bashing
on the 60+year-old spoiled-child and second-choice jokes (unless USC
once-and-for-all changes its too-easily-modifiable acronym name helps any…),
that SC just $buys its way up with wealthy alumni and “cheats on” on SAT numbers,
but one can only buy and cheat so much to achieve limited cosmetic improvements,
if without a right-on structural school revelation plan and management determination.<br>
As comparison, why’s BostonU still ranked 56 as of 2011 same as been the
past century? They also have tons of money $alumni to buy up.</p>

99

<p>UCLA has been slipping in producing Nobel-level research results and scholars. If you look at it closely, all their Nobel laureates are from many years ago. In this arena, other UCs are the new comers, such as UCSD, UCI, UCSB …</p>

100

<p>they really should give more credit to USC’s international diversity, and their investments in the pacific rim. In China and most other asian countries, USC is looked more highly upon than like Emory vanderbilt, notre dame (my friends still think its a french university) and WUSL (why are they ranked so hiiiighhh???), which arent even known to some of us lol</p>