I’m considering applying to USC, but I get the sense that there are few nerdy/weird types (like myself) there. My dad, whose friend graduated USC in 1990, said it had a strong “jocks and cheerleaders” vibe. Can any current (or recently graduated) USC students confirm or deny these statements?
There are plenty of nerdy/weird types at USC these days.
The USC of today bears NO resemblance to the USC of the mid 1980s, when your dad’s friend started there. Back then, USC was a low ranked, low academics “safety” school, kind of a joke among even semi-serious high school students. It did have a “dumb jocks/cheerleader” reputation at the time.
But it’s totally different now. They have raised their academics, selectivity and rankings from 1985 to the present more than any college in the country.
http://web.archive.org/web/20070908142457/http://chronicle.com/stats/usnews/
There are now a lot of high stats nerdy types there.
Well to give you an idea, when your dad’s friend went to school, USC’s acceptance rate was over 70% - not much credit to him there. It was the Arizona State University of California. Now it accepts 17% of applicants, 29% of whom had perfect 4.0 GPAs in college. The middle-range SAT score we now let in is a 2150, so at least our frat bros have some nerd in them. Source: https://pressroom.usc.edu/the-letters-are-in-the-mail-usc-releases-fall-admission-stats/
USC is one of the nerdiest places I know. You don’t get away with having a top 10 engineering program with anything but a school full of geeks. Less than one fifth of students are greek, and only the “top” social houses are traditionally fratty. That experience is open to anyone who wishes to be a part of it. For the rest of us, we’re trying to get the most out of a top 25 education. The most represented school at both NASA-JPL and SpaceX is USC, according to LinkedIn. When you picture these two institutions, you don’t really think of people who did nothing at school but party.
Your concern should honestly be whether you can find your niche, rather than what demographic you want to avoid, which is essentially prejudice. I don’t think you’ll have trouble finding “weird” people at USC, actually much less so than any UC, which consists of majorly… conformist asian kids like myself. One reason I turned down UCLA and Cal - way too unweird. USC’s scholarships bring in all sorts of interesting people - I’ve met albinos, math savants, special forces vets, war refugees, retired pro gamers - all off the top of my head. We have a Smash Bros. club, an eSports club, USC Hackers, a million science and engineering clubs. If you’re enrolled at USC and are grumbling about a couple of guys wearing tank tops in your GEs perpetuating jock culture, you’re not trying - or maybe you’re not weird enough to be at USC :). I’d advise actually visiting the campus on a school day, rather than have your opinion formed by old people whose perspectives change very slowly.
There’s a Quidditch team, so that should answer your question. :>
@8bagels/epicer: I posted this in the UC/CSU can learn from the rise of USC posting:
In the 1990 US News’ America’s best colleges (selected samples):
Ranked Acceptance Rate
1 Harvard 18%
2 Stanford 18%
6 MIT 30%
11 Univ. of Chicago 45%
13 Univ. of Penn 41%
13 UC Berkeley 37%
15 John Hopkins 48%
17 UCLA 43%
21 Univ. of Mich. 60%
22 Carnegie Mellon 64%
23 Northwestern 47%,
24 Washington Univ. 54%
In the next quartile (#26 to 50, no ranked order, selected sample):
Emory 55% acceptance rate
NYU 52% acceptance rate
UC San Diego 55% acceptance rate
UC Davis 69%
Univ. of Notre Dame 34%
USC 74%
Univ. of Washington 65%
Univ. of Wisconsin 72%
Vanderbilt University 58%
USC and some private schools (Northwestern, Wash. Univ., Emory, Notre Dame, and Vanderbilt) have come a long way from 1990 to where they are today.
In the 1990 survey, USC was within the top 50 and to put things in perspective, other notable top 50 universities also had high acceptance rates.