<p>
</p>
<p>HYP and their ilk take multiples of kids from the top boarding schools as compared with USC. This year, from Exeter, maybe 10 went to Yale and Harvard each and USC got 2 or 3. I would like to see USC get the 10, and of the high caliber, as well. That’s all. Boarding school doesn’t erase the inherent diversity that the boarding school kids entered boarding school with; further, USC NEEDS more connections and roots into traditional East Coast wealth, frankly, and shift from its Orange County tilt. That’s a trade-off worth valuing, even if it will upset the “Trojan family” in that geography who think USC is their birthright. Get more Vanderbilts, Rockefellers, duPonts, Cullens, Hunts, etc. etc. invested – literally – in USC, and perceptions and “rankings” will change. You won’t achieve this with the cliched admissions of yet more Korean violinists and minorities with sob stories.</p>
<p>Arts&Letters, here is your statement with just a few highly appropriate edits:</p>
<p>“USC is an amazing place - but it is also extremely wealthy and filled with a lot of kids whose parents were able to give them advantages other students didn’t have even before they entered. Having said that, USC teaches a value system steeped in service and it complements the “exclusivity” that he proposed.”</p>
<p>Thank you also for bringing up the whole outsider thing, which bugs me too. :-)</p>
<p>I would have preferred not to be paraphrased as I don’t want someone to think I made that statement about USC. My comments are and remain about an elite boarding school (high school). USC has significantly more diversity both economic and ethnic - that boarding schools do. And yes - many schools are filled with the wealthy. USC has had that reputation for years. I have not found it to be a barrier for those who aren’t part of the 1%. </p>
<p>Which is in part made possible by to the large student population you detest.</p>
<p>USC was very diverse in the past several decades and, in fact, that’s never been an issue. This is where the “where have you been” or “bugged by outsiders” comments work both ways. USC’s greatest strength is its diverse student body and I even noted that on my admissions essay in part based on the USC catalog I had as a high school freshman. This was almost three decades ago. USC was diverse and smaller, such that registering for virtually any class (GE) was easy, housing was affordable and plentiful, class sizes were manageable, we weren’t crawling all over each other, and we were happy. Now those poor kids are forced to engage their parents to help do what students were taking care of back then. It saddens me that the university has become heavily bureaucratic and cumbersome largely because of its uncontrollable growth. Nikias must go. And I will do everything to prevent Elizabeth Garrett, the provost, from becoming USC’s next president and turning USC into the University of Oklahoma, her alma mater.</p>
<p>I have to add that USC’s wealthy students back in the day weren’t all WASPs as has been erroneously portrayed. Some of the wealthiest students in the 80s were from Iran, Mexico, and Taiwan. At one time, USC enrolled the largest American continent of students from Iran, before the fall of Tehran. Look it up. There were thousands. There were several Mexican students who were extremely wealthy, and hundreds of wealthy Chinese STEM students. Then there were the Jewish students whose parents had money. And that doesn’t include the African Americans whose parents were rich and famous. USC always had an international flair and it’s student body was legendary for being diverse. This is not news.</p>