<p>How do the civil engineering programs of these two schools stack up nationally? Are they comparable to some of the best programs or are they second tier?</p>
<p>UCLA is quite good but USC is probably a notch lower. However neither of them are comparable to the best CE programs (UIUC, Berkeley, etc).</p>
<p>Thank you. I read your other posts and saw you are interested in Structural (I am too). I was just curious, from what source(s) does your knowledge of the reputations of these schools come from (us news rankings, other rankings, teachers/professors, etc)?</p>
<p>I am an international (Indian) and have never visited the US. I am applying to grad school this Fall, so I did a lot of research and my ideas are just a culmination of various rankings including US News, my professors' views, publications in research journals, etc. I cannot say that my views are accurate but I can only do so much from this far. I can only tell you what I would have done if I were in your place.</p>
<p>UCLA is ranked 34th and 21st for graduate Civil Engineering.
USC, on the other hand, is unranked.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.engineer.ucla.edu/stories/2004/rank.htm%5B/url%5D">http://www.engineer.ucla.edu/stories/2004/rank.htm</a>
<a href="http://www.stat.tamu.edu/%7Ejnewton/nrc_rankings/nrc41.html#area22%5B/url%5D">http://www.stat.tamu.edu/~jnewton/nrc_rankings/nrc41.html#area22</a></p>
<p>thanks big time</p>
<p>What about Cal Poly?</p>