@WWWard You’re right that article was old, but USC is still #2 in terms of private universities. BU (not BC) received over 60,000 applications. Just making sure you have the correct information, before you state that it’s “undeniable” USC is #1 in applications for private universities.
https://www.bu.edu/today/2017/record-60000-applicants-to-bu/
@sushiritto I stand corrected then. Thanks for taking the time to prove yourself correct… lol.
@KTJordan78 And your comment takes us full circle back to my very first comment on 8/7, page 1 of this thread… and my dismay from here on the east coast that it is even perceived as a rivalry other than in California.
My original statement was…
“Out here on the east coast, we never even understand the points of comparison. Maybe it is a California-centric thing or simply based on their geographical closeness & the sports rivalry, as both colleges are in Los Angeles, but neither of my kids (both now Trojans) ever even considered UCLA. Last night, there were many teens here at my daughter’s birthday party, and the topic of college of course arose. But none of them ever considered or will be considering UCLA either. So… at least in Florida, they are generally not even considered in the same category of colleges. UCLA is thought of as a very good, if not excellent, state school… and certainly better academically than the state/public universities in Florida. But USC & Stanford are the only California schools I have ever heard of in terms of being on the wish lists of Florida teens. USC is thought of as an elite university on par with Duke, Vanderbilt, Rice, Emory, Northwestern, UChicago, etc. & just one step below (in most people’s opinions) Stanford, MIT and the better known Ivies (Harvard, Yale, Penn, Brown, Princeton, Columbia). In my younger daughter’s case, USC was her dream school though from the beginning, and even an admission to Princeton could not sway her from attending. So USC being consistently ranked higher does not seem at all surprising to us. It not being ranked even higher though is a bit surprising.”
Nothing added since Aug 7th here on this thread has or will sway me from my own perspective (granted that it is unique to my life and contacts and prior experiences on the east coast), & regardless of how strange such an eastern perspective may seem to Californians. So I shall again retire from this thread… leaving the rivalry and defense of UCLA to the rest of you.
Go Bruins! (if that’s your thing) And good luck to those applying to either school this cycle…
I would like to interject a couple of items already mentioned. First, @KTJordan78 mentions that UCLA is the most applied college the past 20 years in the US. That may be true, but many (maybe most) of these applicants also had applied to UCB. All UC applications are done in one document. It is just a matter of checking the appropriate box for which UC one is applying to. A person can check all the boxes for all 9 campuses if the person chooses. The more UC’s checked, the more there are in application fees. We don’t know how many applied to UCLA or UCB as their primary choice or another campus like UCSD or UCSB as the first choice.
Secondly, @KTJordan78 mentioned USC’s status in a late 1990’s version of the US News Rankings. I am a hoarder of old US News Rankings (will have to follow up on this) and I am almost positive that this fact is incorrect and @KTJordan78 is cherry picking and may be distorting facts.
Bottom line is that both UCLA and USC are fine institutions with great programs. In CA, we are very fortunate to have great private and public colleges.
Yep, but with a yield rate of 80% +/-, Stanford doesn’t lose many. Even schools like Harvard, MIT, Yale, etc. are turned down. Every college gets turned down, including USC.
You make many assumptions. UC’s offer no financial aid to OOS and little to no merit aid. It’s quite the news out here, and maybe folks on the East Coast don’t read the news, but they do cap OOS enrollment at UC’s.
@WWWard The entire 15-30 seconds was well worth it. :)) We all must stay vigilant and fight against “alternative facts.” :)>-
http://web.archive.org/web/20070909225048/http://chronicle.com:80/stats/usnews/
USC was ranked 44 in '96 (the first year they were included), and has slowly crept up to the mid 20s since. Yes, I was off on the rankings off the top of my head, but the point (that UCLA has historically always been ranked higher than USC, minus two years where USC was ranked just slightly above) remains true.
This is not to say that this proves a superiority in UCLA. Rankings are somewhat silly! But I do provide it to offset @wwward 's claims that USC has this mysterious better reputation with students, and that US News “ranks USC higher”. It does not.
SIDE NOTE: for 2018 US News has Berkeley, UCLA, and USC all tied at #21 nationally…
@sushiritto Not sure why you are on this thread trashing USC. You stated earlier that you did not graduate from any of the fine CA institutions. Do you have a child at UCLA who is feeling the heat?
It is foolish to pick a university based solely on rankings. There are so many other factors involved in making such an individual choice. I’ve known Stanford and Harvard grads who went on to lackluster careers, and graduates from no name schools who had amazing career success. Students should pick the right environment for themselves.
@stardustmom Please show me where I trashed USC. I’ll save you some time and I tell you what I did say.
Do I have to have graduated one of these “fine institutions” (my quote from earlier), to comment on them? Do I have a child at UCLA “feeling heat”? What does even mean? 
And why is that even pertinent to the discussion?
For the record, as previously mentioned, my D18 will probably be applying to each of these wonderful schools among many others in-state and OOS. And I have the results of the “Sushiritto Rankings” right here in front of me. :-bd
Your posts read like someone who has an ax to grind with USC. Thanks for the clarification.
@stardustmom But WWWard’s posts don’t sound like they have an ax to grind with UCLA??? :-/
Threads like this get tiresome after a while because of the UCLA fans who hop on here and immediately start bashing USC. At some point, that says more about them than it does about USC.
Nearly all of the UCLA grads I know nowadays only went there because it was the highest-ranked UC campus they were admitted to or because they thought that Berkeley was full of fruitcakes. With only a handful of exceptions, they were all California natives as well.
By contrast, the USC alums I know came to California from all over. There’s a critical mass of people from Orange County and the Bay Area, but otherwise the USC people come from all over. What gets glossed over by all of the UCLA grads in their endless bashing of USC is that the UC schools are almost as expensive as USC and Stanford out of state, but typically offer ZERO financial aid to out of state students. USC also offers a lot of merit aid, which sweetens the deal for going to that school.
USC’s film school has an 80% yield rate and has been ranked #1 in the world by the Hollywood Reporter for the last 5 years in a row. I was fortunate enough to be admitted to every single school I applied to and am grateful to have had the opportunity to attend that institution. My competition partner on one of USC’s academic teams was also admitted to Harvard (really) and chose USC over that school.
What also seems lost on the UCLA grads bashing USC on here is that the rankings that put UCLA ahead generally all focus on research, while the rankings that put USC ahead focus on quality of life. To directly quote one Bruin alum I know, “UCLA is a factory.” The student/faculty ratio at USC is around 9:1. At Stanford it’s 7:1. At Caltech it’s 3:1. At Berkeley and UCLA, it’s around 18:1. At Cal State Northridge it’s 24:1. No one questions the excellence of UCLA students, but people are absolutely right to question the quality of the educational experience, as most UCLA and Berkeley grads I know resented being endlessly stuck in lecture classes with 500 students. By contrast, my film production and writing classes typically had 12-20 students at most, and my thesis class had 6 students.
USC and UCLA are both great schools and I’ve never had a problem recommending either school to any kid looking for advice on college. But it’s telling that you always have UCLA students and grads on here bashing USC. I only visited the UCLA page on here a few days ago for the first time just for comparison and never saw any USC people bashing UCLA. That endless need to bash USC should tell prospective applicants all they need to know.
@ucbalumnus True that all UCs have the same application, much like how most other universities (including USC) accept the Common Application. Your comment is neither here nor there.
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Closing thread. There’s just nothing else to say.