Hey guys! I have gotten accepted to USC and UCLA as a transfer but I don’t know what to choose! I am a political science major and both are great schools but can someone please tell me which program might be better. Also I got the same amount in Aid from both school so no worries there.
@maira91 . . . being the fact that there isn’t really much to grab onto in your post, all I can state to you is to go wherever your happiness index has its highest ceiling. These for each university could be things incredibly ancillary to straight academics. (English pronunciation for the referenced in italics if you don’t mind; same with the word harass.) In other words, they’re both great, so don’t base your decision on supposed rankings, etc.
The social-science majors, though, at UCLA are incredibly pre-professional; I don’t know how they would be at USC, but with the students at the latter, I would think their preprofessional hands (plans) would show more readily in their majors. There are sociology majors at UCLA who aspire to IT and have taken the Program in Computing program; there are history and economics majors who aspire to med school and have taken the premed core; there are poli-sci majors who aspire to be business owners and have minored in Entrepreneurship, and there are anthro majors who aspire to law school.
In this way, I guess, UCLA is more founded on the Harvard model but without its success of course, though UCLA does have some great professionally related majors.
For undergrad political science, I doubt there’s much meaningful difference between the programs. I’d go with whichever school you feel most comfortable at.
UCLA is higher ranked in political science than USC. Overall, both schools have great reputations. I don’t know if you are looking at law schools or not, but it is a natural progression for many political science majors to go into law. If you are interested in law, you might look at which top law schools is fairly represented by USC or UCLA. From the UC Berkeley Law’s website (a top 8 to 12 law school), UCLA and USC graduates, along with others notable top 20 to 252 schools, predominantly represent the UC Berkeley Law entering class. Also, talk to others in the political science arena. It is a toss up, I might very slightly lean toward UCLA. Just an opinion.
@maira91 Living arrangements should also be a strong consideration in choosing. The closer you live to either campus, the better. Familiarize yourself with LA traffic if you haven’t already done so. USC is virtually downtown while UCLA is surrounded by Beverly Hills, Bel Aire, Brentwood, and Westwood.
Also, the Trojan alum tends to be more supportive and loyal as opposed to being wide spread. Measure which one has more school spirit. Public versus private and large versus huge can matter, too.
Poli Sci is a rather common degree, so whichever is cheaper. If you are OOS, then I’d pick 'SC.
Re: post #3, meant top 20 to 25 schools, not 20 to 252 schools.
I am from the LA area but I chose usc b/c of smaller classes and i liked the feel of the school. UCLA would feel like I am still at home.
Then you have your answer. You will meet more OOS people at USC
Re, my #1, let me add a note a decade later to my last paragraph within that post: *Though UCLA’s social-science (“ss”) majors don’t have the same ascendent success – whatever that may be – as Harvard’s, they do very well in an incredibly varied career path, despite the seeming limitations of perusal within the ss’s, included it being a fallback; e.g., the guy who majored in soc is a lights-out coder but didn’t have the stats for CS.
OP: USC’s clearly the best choice for you because you verified this; best of luck.