<p>Hmm, well I thought about this a lot last year (but for engineering, although now I’m in econ at Duke, go figure) and I was going to choose USC. Like you, the NMF/Presidential scholarship made the costs acceptable for me. Similar to what BedHead said, I wanted to go to USC for the simple fact that I wanted to go somewhere different than Seattle. </p>
<p>So I really think it depends on which location you like best. Academically and rank-wise, I’d say there’s no real difference, so don’t base it on that.</p>