USC, UCLA, UCSD, Berkeley - Compare/Contrast?

College Search & Selection
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<p>University of Southern California
University of California - Los Angeles
University of California - San Diego
University of California - Berkeley
(and I'll throw in University of San Diego)</p>

<p>What are the major differences, pros & cons of these California schools?</p>

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<p>USC - Pros: All around, probably the best in terms of quality of education since you don’t have to worry about budget cuts, and will probably get more financial aid ESPECIALLY if you’re coming from out of state. Gorgeous campus. Also has a semester system instead of a quarter system if you prefer that.
Cons: TERRIBLE neighborhood. You basically don’t walk off campus.</p>

<p>UCLA - Pros: AMAZING location. A couple miles from the beach and in a super trendy neighborhood.
Cons: I believe the only reason it has the reputation it does is because of how difficult it is to get in. It has a few strengths in programs but I don’t believe it’s any better than UCSB, SD, or Davis. Also, I believe the kids there are a bit too competitive with each other, but that’s just me.</p>

<p>UCSD - Pros: Best location hands down. Right on the beach in La Jolla. Can choose your own General Education program based on the residential college system.
Cons: I actually can’t think of any, except for maybe the UC Budget cuts.</p>

<p>UC Berkeley - Pros: Easily the best reputation. Gets more funding than any UC. Amazing spot in the Bay Area if you’re into that. Overall great programs. Also on the semester system.
Cons: Probably the same as UCLA in that kids can get really competitive. Also gets colder than the other schools if you’re not used to it.</p>

<p>USD: I don’t know much about the school. I do know it is Catholic but I don’t know how much it’s imposed on it’s students.</p>

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<p>Based on USNWR Best Colleges 2012</p>

<p>UCB 98%
UCLA 97%
UCSD 100%
UCD 100%
UCSB 96%
UCI 96%</p>

<p>Wow!! Both UCSD & UCD only accept Top-10% High School Student more so than any other top tier UC campuses!? lol</p>

<p>USC 88%</p>

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<p>@ kylebelieves
The students at UCSD are at least as competitive as those in UCLA and Berkeley, if not more so. Strength in engineering and life sciences attract a lot of cutthroat students. The social life at UCSD is also very dead (compared to Berkeley and UCLA). Budget cuts do affect UCSD most significantly due to its lower endowment and the fact that it doesn’t get as many donations as Berkeley or UCLA due to not being as famous.</p>

<p>It’s also untrue that Berkeley is the UC that gets the most funding. UCLA definitely gets more funding than Berkeley; though, UCLA has more students and has to operate a med school. Ultimately, I do believe that Berkeley should have the highest spending per student in the undergraduate arena but the calculations are actually rather sophisticated and not as simple as “Berkeley gets the most funding”. </p>

<p>My biggest qualm with USC is that its students do not appear to have much professional school success. The university appears to be more comparable to the mid-tier UCs in this regard (if not slightly worse). USC is known for having the most attractive students, though, and its social life is unbeatable.</p>

<p>Of course, UCLA suffers from the stigma of not being particularly strong in any program, as you’ve already appeared to pick up. Because of this, it does attract a demographic of students different from Berkeley and UCSD, however.</p>

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<p>Perhaps, but only true in the sciences. UCSD’s CR&W scores are significantly less than Cal or UCLA. Other cons: the residential college system (for non-science majors); no college town; no sports; a lot of students go home on weekends.</p>

<p>'SC has a huge alumni network in SoCal, and is great for jobs. I disagree that they don’t have “professional school success.” Grads in Engineering and Biz do quite well, for example.</p>

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<p>Huh? :rolleyes:</p>

<p>According to the National Research Council, (the academics of academia), UCLA does quite well:</p>

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<p>Every u exaggerates the top-10% statistic in its CDS, and as a consequence what is used in USN. </p>

<p>I would guess this statistic s/b as follows, with approx uw gpas (though many high schools rank grads according to final w gpa):</p>

<p>UCB ~82%, 3.83
UCLA ~80%, 3.81
USC ~60%, 3.70
UCSD ~ 50%, 3.64
UCD 30%, 3.50
UCSB 30%, 3.50
UCI 30%, 3.50</p>

<p>Btw, 80% and above would be top tier of all c’s and u’s because the Ivies would have large %'s of legacy admits, and this fact would lower their %'s. The only U that would probably have 90% or > would probably be Cal Tech. Also, privates tend to draw more private-educated secondary schooled students, and these hss would have higher level uw grades given. Top-tier public schools, too, like Palo Alto and Gunn HS’s often have 3.9 uw gpas as < top-10% rank.</p>

<p>Think of it this way, either a student is top-10% of hs or not. Would the mean uw gpas of these u’s place a student with similar grades in the top 10% or their hss at graduation? For a 3.6 or 3.7, probably not, dependent on the hs. A lower performing hs might could possibly place a student with these grades in the top decile.</p>

<p>kylebelieves #2:</p>

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<p>I agree if we could clone a student, say female with high stats, and place her at UCLA and, say, SB. Her options at graduation from the two would theoretically be the same because she would have chosen the same major, say, biochem, and had the same quals at graduation, say, 3.8 magna cum laude, and a top MCAT score, say, 39.</p>

<p>She would be accepted to the same med schools, etc. So yes, if all students had the same quals, UC Merced would get someone to the same place for employment and/or grad school as UC Berkeley.</p>

<p>But as we know, this doesn’t apply to real life … and if we looked at the placement of UCLA and Cal to top level grad programs as m and l and b schools, both will have much higher nos. of placement into top-level grad schools than the other UC’s. Top level grads at any UC would have a lot of the same professional options, undoubtedly. The difference, again, would be the %'s of grads who have these higher level options. Same with Ivies, etc … higher %'s of higher level placements, as compared to top-tier publics … not quite as high wrt higher %'s of higher placements.</p>

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<p>How are they different?</p>

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I meant “professional success” in terms of attending top law, med, or business schools.</p>

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<p>Pros: nice campus, no hills, their L&S school got a huge donation so they’re going to be able to bump up a lot of their programs, in addition to just beastly fundraising in general this year (1.2b according to Georgia girl) semester system also lets you have a life while you’re doing your studies so that’s a plus. Also they have a beastly glee club if you’re into that. They also do Improv at USC (which my brother told me they do at berkeley as well but i haven’t seen them do it at UCLA.)</p>

<p>cons: generally bad graduate programs, and they have at least as many students as UCLA (37k IMS) due to them having an asston of GSIs. The only other universities with as many students in the top 25 is Columbia. The neighborhood is also fairly bad, their student body seems dull and not really interested in academics. Filled with many ‘bro’ types, and at least a few times while i’ve been on campus, i’ve interacted seen a few drunk people on campus.</p>

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<p>pros: beautiful buildings, highly intelligent (and attractive) student body, close to the beach, westwood (which many other universities, including USC, are trying to mimic) beautiful gym, lots of coffeeshops on campus, highly intelligent professors as well. It’s probably the most prestigious university in the top 25 which isn’t even 100 years old yet (will be 100 in 2019 IMS) The best medical school in california and on the west coast (ronald reagan is super beastly) and the Ashe health center is amazing as well (being able to go to a doctors appointment 20min after you made it is pretty awesome)</p>

<p>cons: HILLS, UCLA has the nickname ‘under construction like always’ since they’re always constructing something. (they’re constructing the dorms, they just tore down the engineering building, and they’re constructing wasserman right now, and i think they want to construct something where the faculty building is) unfortunately not as prestigious as berkeley which can have some impact on your job prospects (especially out of the US) as noted, budget cuts</p>

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<p>pros: nice area, close enough to mexico that if you wanted to go it’s much closer/cheaper than if you did it from anywhere else. Renowned 6-school system. Part of their campus is a nude beach (look up black’s beach) comic con happens there every year, etc.</p>

<p>cons: UCSD is known for having a complete lack of a social life, but i don’t go there and have never been there so i wouldn’t know. They got hurt really hard by the budget cuts. It resulted in lost high quality faculty (like those 3 star professors they lost to Rice) and they had to close down some of their libraries (2 IMS)</p>

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Pros: easily the most prestigious UC (and one of the most in the world). Close to the bay area, sillicon valley, etc. good academics, lots of nobel laureates associated with the university. Semester system is nice.</p>

<p>cons: cold weather (it’s the only university listed that has it. All norcal really has is San Francisco. Even the beaches in norcal, IMS, are erosional (as contrasted with the depositional oceans in socal) so while their beaches are dwindling away, the california ones are getting bigger. In general, socal > norcal.</p>

<p>Also, it doesn’t have a med. school (and no, UCSF doesn’t count :p)</p>

<p><a href=“and%20I’ll%20throw%20in%20University%20of%20San%20Diego”>quote</a>

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<p>I don’t know much about USD. All i know is that jim parsons went there.</p>

<p>there really hard to compare and contrast. In terms of quality, only USC, UCLA, and Berkeley are in the top 25 of the ones listed, and are probably the only ones that will be financially stable in terms of this tough economy.</p>

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i’ve never heard of UCLA having any such stigma. We’re pretty beastly in applied lingiustics, musicology, film, and especially medicine. Check this out for example (which was developed at UCLA):</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OU8MWVz5Vzc&t=72s[/url]”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OU8MWVz5Vzc&t=72s&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>is there actually any evidence for the ‘alumni network’ claim? i mean, anyone who gets a job through the alumni network might have just as easily got it without it.</p>

<p>wrt graduate prospects, academia, at least, is highly superficial. In this respect, USC still has a huge stigma. Maybe not so much in the U.S., but definitely in the world at large.</p>

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<p>Just anecdotal, based on 20+ years of working/watching hiring managers in SoCal. The “Trojan Family” is real.</p>

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Have to disagree here…I don’t think Westwood is a great student area at all. It’s generally pretty expensive and lacking in some of the things you’d expect; dining and bars are decent but not great. It does have a lot of coffee shops.</p>

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<p>Freshman profiles</p>

<p>UCD
<a href=“http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/admissions/campuses/files/davis.pdf[/url]”>http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/admissions/campuses/files/davis.pdf&lt;/a&gt;
UCLA
[Profile</a> of Admitted Freshmen, Fall 2011 - UCLA Undergraduate Admissions](<a href=“http://www.admissions.ucla.edu/prospect/adm_fr/Frosh_Prof11.htm]Profile”>http://www.admissions.ucla.edu/prospect/adm_fr/Frosh_Prof11.htm)
UCSD
<a href=“Undergraduate Statistics”>Undergraduate Statistics;
USC
<a href=“http://www.usc.edu/admission/undergraduate/private/1112/USCFreshmanProfile2011.pdf[/url]”>http://www.usc.edu/admission/undergraduate/private/1112/USCFreshmanProfile2011.pdf&lt;/a&gt;
USD
[USD</a> : Undergraduate Admissions: Counselors: Statistics and Averages](<a href=“http://www.sandiego.edu/admissions/undergraduate/counselors/statistics.php]USD”>http://www.sandiego.edu/admissions/undergraduate/counselors/statistics.php)</p>

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<p>my original comment was coming from an article i read somewhere online. No clue where.</p>

<p>Westwood isn’t expensive for being westwood, it’s expensive for being on the west side. Go to any of the nearby areas like west la, century city, beverly hills, brentwood, etc. They’re all super expensive (hell, i paid like 5 bucks for an amazing, but expensive, tea in the century city mall)</p>

<p>from what i’ve seen, any large university will have plenty of coffeeshops (there’s 5 in the village and at least like 6 or so on campus.</p>

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<p>In the profiles above do note there is a difference in admitted students and enrolled students. Compare apples to apples.</p>

<p>USC has premier art schools. These students may have an incredible talent, imagination and creativity. For these schools within the university those qualities can be more important than rank in class. </p>

<p>In my opinion I think it is difficult for UCLA students to give an unbiased opinion of USC.</p>

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<p>

It’s a start:
[Campus</a> dedicates Li Ka Shing Center for Biomedical and Health Sciences, philanthropist receives Berkeley Medal](<a href=“Berkeley News | Berkeley”>Berkeley News | Berkeley)</p>

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<p>All three schools, UCLA, USC, Cal, are denying a lot of high stat students as seen by this [school](<a href=“http://pvphs.com/pdf/CollegeAcceptance.pdf”>http://pvphs.com/pdf/CollegeAcceptance.pdf&lt;/a&gt;). College decisions start on page 30. In fairness to USC and Cal, the college-decisions part only notes SATI’s, and a lot of their students switched to the ACT to post their high scores. Also, SAT’s seem artificially high at this school (many takes, etc), even ratcheted significantly higher from last year, which probably means the administrators at the school probably encouraged students to intensively prep and retake -> highly ascended scores. And what hurts UCLA in a set of students who switch to one or the other and retake many times – generally stated not wrt this set of students – is UCLA reports all SAT and ACT scores forwarded by all students. Not sure what Cal or USC does.</p>

<p>GeorgiaGirl #14:

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<p>Likewise, UCLA’s art schools are portfolio and audition driven. I guess this is probably more of an LA university phenomenon as the area that encompasses both is highly entertainment oriented. </p>

<p>Warblersrule #11:</p>

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<p>beyphy’s referring to an article in the LA Times which showed a trend to more upscale housing surrounding USC that caters to the more wealthy student body. UCLA’s always been surrounded by apts. that have these special amenities. </p>

<p>beyphy #9:</p>

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<p>Best med school in CA is probably UCSF, though Stanford Med alumni would argue that their alma is tops in the state. UCLA is probably ranked third. But maybe you meant Med Center or Hospital?</p>

<p>I’m not a fact-checker, too lazy, don’t want to do research, but these are just things that stand out as I read the responses.</p>

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<p>Hopefully they’ll implode the old med center … absolute eye-sore. </p>

<p>USD:</p>

<p>Good Catholic school, don’t think it’s Jesuit as LMU, USF, and SCU are … and very small enrollment obviously. </p>

<p>Good business school, as Catholics tend to do this very well, along with ethical training, etc. Generally … good undergrad trades and as a consequence graduates don’t aspire to grad professional schools.</p>

<p>Someone pointed to a very nice youtube video of the campus, which is very nice CA missions arc.</p>

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<p>Yes, i meant medical center (which is why i immediately referenced RR instead of geffen.)</p>

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<p>i actually passed by it today and i like it. It’s very monolithic.</p>

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<p>UCSD Pros: Beautiful campus to some. It’s large but I feel their architecture lacks a cohesive feel to it, the way USC is done in the same style. Great education and is probably underrated when you look at the resources available to you.</p>

<p>UCSD Cons:not much of a social scene outside of whatever clique you decide to join up with. Engineering and Science majors make the campus seem almost unsociable.</p>

<p>USC Pros: Alumni network is really good and verges on nepotism. This may sound harsh but note I’m listing this as a plus! Also note that in nearly all rankings and employer surveys USC Marshall ranks quite low. In some areas of business I think they’re ranked at about 30th or lower (although in other areas they are top-10). So despite the low regard that employs show towards Marshall, it’s grads still have a terrific job placement rate. UCLA’s alumni base is technically larger but UCLA lacks the cohesion that USC has</p>

<p>USC Cons: The people are sooo annoying. It’s like a finishing school for Republicans. They’re all ‘bros’ and show passion for nothing but drinking and making money. USC grads aren’t the people responsible for our current economic situation, but that’s only because USC cannot place within Goldman Sach’s front office. The type of people are the same. No regard for society, profit for profit’s sake. Drunk idiots on campus during school days. I think the school is legitimate but USC people are some of the most annoying entitled people I’ve ever had the displeasure of meeting.</p>

<p>Cal Pros: Great job placement both here and abroad. Even among the non-business, non-science majors they place their students in good places, despite being so large. Class sizes are big but I truly feel that the professors care about the students education and are super open to chatting with you during office hours about the material.</p>

<p>Cal Cons: Pretty big class sizes for most of the lectures. Even upper division lectures tend towards the larger size. But that doesn’t mean that opportunities for undergrads don’t exist, in fact I find that it’s quite abundant. Biggest con of all, the budget cuts. Prices keep on rising and so many things are being trimmed. The surrounding area isn’t really a con, i don’t think. Oakland might be bad but Berkeley is a really cool area even if it appears ‘dirty’.</p>

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<p>WhoFriend:</p>

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<p>Since you’ve restricted things to the world of commerce…</p>

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<p>Among boutique firms, this would probably be especially true. Among the larger firms/companies, probably less so.</p>

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<p>I don’t know what you mean by ‘quite low,’ and certainly I don’t want to take away from Georgiagirl’s protected domain, but, top-25 for grad, top-10 on some lists for undergrad isn’t ‘low.’</p>

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<p>The job placement %'s show a lot of Marshall alumni looking for work late into the year of graduation, and a decent amt. into the new year. But Marshall has a good ~1,000 grads, including ~ 200 from Leventhal (I don’t know if Leventhal is a sub-school of Marshall). That’s a lot to place into employment, so the statistics of having to place so many, would actually be at least decently good, and certainly factoring in the economy. </p>

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<p>This is the main part I was trying to wade to, of course. UCLA’s students are more geared towards grad school – ~ 65% fo for post-bac for degrees. M, L, and even B. Add, Pharm, Dent, grad Engineering. So you can’t pidgeon-hole UCLA grads to primarily bus. But you’ll find poli sci, history, soc, majors do well in the non-quant side shaded towards sales, adv, marketing sides of the bus sectors as well as math-econ, econ, econ-bus, doing well in quantitative. </p>

<p>Cal’s undergrad Haas has great % placement, etc, because it is so small in relation to the rest of the U, and has barriers to entry, which assures that just about all Haas grads have honors status at graduation. The same can be said of UCLA"s bizecon as well as econ majors now.</p>

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<p>And contrary to what is being circulated on this board, budget cuts are affecting Cal and UCLA less than the rest of the UCs. This is becoming entirely a spiel and something to be stated without much credibility.</p>