<p>Hi, I'm trying to decide between USC and UC Berkeley for Economics.
Financially, I only need to pay $2000 to go to USC, whereas I need to pay $8000 for Cal. In addition, I live in SoCal, so USC is closer and Cal is in NorCal. Please help!</p>
<p>Go to SC. You're in So Cal, you're going to pay less, and you're going to have the Trojan family with you when you graduate.</p>
<p>Bump. Sorry, please help!</p>
<p>I think you just got great advice from protokurios, why bump?</p>
<p>It depends on where you want to work when you graduate, ie NorCal or SoCal. Our group recently rejected an interview candidate who's about to graduate from UCB engineering school with a 3.3 uw GPA. So even the brand name of the UCB engineering degree did not help this person.</p>
<p>So are you saying that good grades at USC are weighed more heavily upon than mediocre grades at Cal? Because I want to go to grad school... and was wondering if they emphasized grades more or WHERE the grades came from (school).</p>
<p>To clarify, he was not rejected because of his GPA. He did not shine in the interview.
For professional school like MBA, Law, Medicine, GPA and standardize test scores trump everything else, including prestige of UG. Think of it as high school all over again. Students who graduate from crappy high schools got into UCLA/UCB because of the high GPA and ok SAT scores. Professional school is the same. Other graduate schools like engineering is more lenient, admission officers or professors look more toward your junior/senior year grades in core engineering courses.</p>