USC class of 2023 Applicants Thread

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Southern California
3961

@uscscholar What is confusing is this is the same post made a second time about issues you had years ago. What are the many issues with the “school, programs and administration, etc.?” Why no data? And why create that user name for this kind of post?

Sorry you feel you had a bad experience, no school is right for everyone and some aren’t gonna be happy no matter where they go. One would hope you have moved on by now and found a place good for you. The fact you wanted to post this for a second time in the last couple months says a lot.

Just saying - again, it is hard to determine if this is a post of a recently banned cc user coming back to wreak havoc on the minds of current applicants, someone that was rejected from USC, a UCLA poster having some fun, or someone with a valid issue to discuss. If the latter, then discuss it, hiding behind veiled innuendo without backup of any data whatsoever is not so helpful.

CC is a community forum, it was not designed to set up and seek only private conversations. This is a great forum to discuss the good, bad and ugly of any school. I would hope you would provide more details of your “multiple bad experiences.” If you want to inform others as you say, then by all means do so with more information.

I assume those that want to attend have happily already committed to USC, and those that found a better school for them committed somewhere else. A school is what one makes of it, so is life. Good luck with yours!

3962

@uscscholar - I would agree with @CADREAMIN, there’s really nothing wrong with posting about the bad and the ugly as well. Please do tell…

3963

@midwestCityParent8 @CADREAMIN

Sure, here's some further details. I'll keep this relatively brief for the sake of brevity on this thread. People can dm me for additional details if they want. I want to note that mileage can very with experiences, and these are just things for people to consider. I'm open to discussion on these issues!

First, some of the pros I noticed:

  1. High diversity of majors on campus.
  2. Easy to do research as an undergrad, profs are willing to talk to you, extensive grant opportunities

3) Pretty campus and the facilities with the new usc village are way better than when I was a freshman

Issues I found with Computer Science;

  1. The intro curriculum is poorly designed and outdated. It is taught in C++, which is a poor choice for an intro to CS course at best. Very few top schools do this -- over 90% of the top 30 programs use Python or Java, which makes far more sense for an intro curriculum as it's far more intuitive to learn.

Further, courses spent excessive time on topics that were not relevant, or technologies that are not used anywhere in industry (i.e. 2 weeks learning QT GUIs for C++). If you want to see an example of an excellent intro to CS class sequence, checkout Berkeley’s CS61a and CS61b.

  1. The quality of professors is mediocre at best. You can go on RateMyProfessor and look at the teachers of all the core computer science classes. There is an excess of teachers with 3/5 or lower ratings. I'm not going to name names -- it seems the overall quality has trended slowly upwards in the past decade, but it still has a long ways to go to be elite.
  2. Significant lack of electives. The focus for computer science at USC is on games and cybersecurity. If you look at the list of CSCI courses, there are virtually no electives for undergraduates outside of games and security. I was interested in data science, machine learning, computational linguistics, etc. but USC had 0 CSCI electives for undergrads in these areas. This is shocking because data science is a huge focus in tech right now, and other schools like UCLA, UCSD Berkeley and even UCSB have created entire majors and/or departments for data science.

There are some graduate courses on areas like machine learning, but there are 1000+ graduate students vying for space, so it’s challenging to get into those courses as an undergrad.

  1. Curriculum beyond the intro courses is also somewhat outdated and poorly done. I'd specifically point people towards CSCI 310 (Prof. William Halfond) as an example -- this is a notoriously useless class.

*Overall, I think USC CS is trending slowly upwards -- in 5-10 years, it might be elite, but it isn't now.

Issues with USC Overall -- note: these are subjective and experiences may very, so take this with a grain of salt.

  1. Location - there is nothing around the campus, and outside of the patrolled zone it is quite unsafe. Lack of nature and quite dirty. Surrounding area itself is just low-income housing and some gangs. Safety is NOT an issue on the campus, but you have to own a car or take expensive Ubers to get anywhere else. Public transit exists, but is poor compared to other cities.
  2. Personally, the social scene felt highly superficial at times, but this is quite subjective so I will avoid discussion of this issue.
  3. Greek system can be exclusive and somewhat abrasive - guys are not allowed into any greek events unless in a frat. This didn't necessarily bother me nor others on a daily basis, and it's definitely feasible to avoid the Greek system if you're not interested. But Greek life at USC is starkly different from Greek systems at other schools that are far more inclusive and tame/normal (after talking w/ friends in frats at UCLA, Berkeley, UCSD, UW, etc.)
  4. Lots of scandals recently (which you can see on the news) - I personally think this reflects poorly on the administration and numerous internal problems they have right now. This is a sign that USC is not trending upwards anymore. Again, this is something that's up to personal interpretation, but something to consider.
3964

@uscscholar I believe that you went to USC, but I also believe that you should let people form their own experiences.

I’m sorry that USC didn’t work out for you, but that doesn’t mean you should go around discouraging prospective/incoming freshmen from attending. USC is not perfect and everybody knows that, but by pointing out all your negative experiences, people reading your comments will already have that bias.

Of course, you are entitled to your opinions and nobody wants to censor you.

3965

@uscscholar where are you studying at currently?

3966

@pdxtigermom currently pursuing other things like internships, working abroad, online classes, etc. Will be transferring somewhere for this fall to finish my degree but I don’t know where yet till all the decisions come out.

3967

He receives a $250,000 gift and returns the favor by publically bashing the grantor. Nice.

3968

@LayraSparks having attended college, I believe the most valuable resource to get information about a school is talking to students who go there. Individual research is important but isn’t the only piece. I WISH I had talked to more students before deciding. Specifically, I wish I had asked them about the things they did NOT like instead of only the things they liked. I believe that very few people ask this question and focus purely on comparing the pros between schools.

I’m not going around discouraging anyone from attending – yes I had a negative experience, but I always clarify my comments with the positive and negative of my experience (as you can see in my post). And I provide mostly an objective view of issues I noticed (i.e. lack of electives, the language and content of CS classes, etc.). I think censoring prospective students from this information is not appropriate. People need to be aware of the good AND bad about a school.

3969

I’ve been asking it before by making sure. When they say enrollment deposit is due by May 1, it means by May 1st 11.59 PM Pacific Time, right?

3970

@uscscholar I’m not questioning anything you said about CS, because honestly, I know nothing about it.
But assuming that low-income automatically means dangerous is a little misleading, for example, and saying that you can’t get around using public transportation is simply not true. I live on campus and have an internship in West Hollywood. I take two metro lines and a bus to get there, and it’s been just fine – during rush hour, it’s even faster than driving.

I do think talking to students is helpful and informative, but the way you suggested that prospective students should “reconsider” going to USC suggests something else. That’s not giving them advice, that’s trying to change their minds.

Anyway, I feel like this argument isn’t what this thread is meant to be about, so I’m signing off on this.

3971

Fortunately, I have actual experience with the CS program since I have a recent CS grad that actually completed the program. I can tell you from our experience, and the placement of many of his CS friends, that the CS program there is stellar. I should preface it by saying these were all amazing students - the best and the brightest, several turning down other T20 schools to attend USC. They are go-getters all the way. Yes, USC’s Games program is #1 in the nation. And they are one of the few schools with such a strong focus on cyber security - a huge area these days. They all had internship offers starting after sophomore year and graduated to amazing opportunities. The CS organizations USC has, which include the think tank type labs, does amazing work for government and non-profits throughout the country, along with making some crazy cool discoveries. Being part of those organizations gave them the real life experience and projects making them extremely desirable in the job market. The opportunities to partake in leading edge developments in CS with industry professionals was beyond belief. His professors ended up being mentors and friends that they still grab lunch with when in LA. They all got crazy high paying gigs at the who’s who of tech companies throughout the world, including a couple of them that branched out to create an amazing start up funded by that facebook guy. At 24 these “kids” are currently setting up manufacturing plants for their product. Frankly, I am sure there are all kinds of stories like this out of the many great CS schools out there. It’s exciting!

I don’t normally try to sell USC, but rather describe what I know from our experience, as everyone has to find their own fit. I don’t talk about something I haven’t had experience with. (For example, SCA, I don’t know much about it at all and defer to other expertise there.) But USC CS, I have experience with, and the USC CS degree has opened amazing doors for mine and several students I know personally. If I thought anything was lacking, I would disclose. So for those I know, the education received gave them everything they needed to be successful, was worth every penny, while the connections and friends made at USC have carried forward into the industry and will be with them always.

3972

I have no doubt that @uscscholar may be an USC student, and each of the 18K undergrads are entitled to their own unique subjective opinion. I would just keep in mind that one single opinion out of 18,000 is hardly to be taken as systemic or that of the majority. It is simply one person’s perception.

Instead… you may wish to look toward the collective results of surveys that include 1000s of current and past students + faculty. I would recommend that any admitted applicant still trying to decide about USC to look at the Niche college rankings and survey results for each school that they are contemplating attending. Niche relies mainly on current students and faculty + alumni to delve into a lot more topic areas and generate survey results that really provide a much more complete sense of what the college experience may be like at a specific college or university.

USC ranks #20 overall on the Niche College Rankings and its grades are: A+ for its Overall Niche Grade… and then by category: Academics A+, Value A+, Diversity A+, Campus A+, Athletics A+, Party Scene A+, Professors A+, Location B+, Dorms A-, Campus Food A-, Student Life A+, Safety B.

The categories where USC ranks in the Top Ten Nationally are: Best Colleges for Design in America 1 of 232, Best Colleges for Film and Photography in America 1 of 153, Best Big Colleges in America 1 of 131, Best Colleges for Business in America 2 of 1,016, Best Colleges for Communications in America 2 of 755, Best Colleges for Student Athletes in America 3 of 1,385, Best Colleges for Art in America 4 of 433, Best Colleges for Performing Arts in America 4 of 247, Best Colleges for International Relations in America 4 of 224, Best Colleges for Architecture in America 4 of 116, Best Colleges for Music in America 5 of 133, Colleges with the Best Student Life in America 7 of 1,542, Best Colleges for Accounting and Finance in America, 9 of 670, Best Colleges for Computer Science in America 9 of 541, Best Colleges for Anthropology and Sociology in America 10 of 532.

Good luck with those pending decisions…

3973

Congrats, it’s May 2nd everyone! The stress of college decisions is behind you!

3974

I’m looking online for a Trojan Mama shirt for my wife, but I can’t find a decent selection. I’ve tried the official bookstore, fanatics.com, and FanPrint…any other suggestions?

3975

Wow you hit up all the usual ones. Fan print has the Best Mom Ever with the Trojan as the O, others have SC as the O, that’s sorta cute, but black…the actual bookstore has way more than they do online, but that’s and expensive shirt to fly from Texas to get it. If I see anything else, will circle back.

3976

Here is a thread to post the admissions decision only statistics. It will definitely help future Trojans. Fight on!
http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/university-southern-california/2122705-usc-class-of-2023-decisions-stats-only-thread.html#latest

3977

@CADREAMIN We now return parents and seniors to the ordinary stress of APs, Prom, finals, and Graduation. But very grateful that the decision is done.

3978

My D was spring admit, she got a call from USC admission officer and was told she got bombed up to Fall. She is very excited. So if you you are spring admit, you may want to find out if there is a chance to move to Fall. I guess it might depends on the majors, she is going to be East Asian Area Studies

3979

DS received email and portal update, also moved from Spring to Fall, in Dornsife.

3980

What does “DS” mean? Sorry to spam the group