<p>Northwestern University. USC and Northwestern compete with different schools for their accepted applicants. Overlap schools (from Fiske’s list compiled 3 years ago): USC overlaps= UCLA, UCSD, Berkeley, NYU, Stanford & Michigan. Northwestern overlaps= Stanford, Duke, Cornell, Penn & Michigan. Two thirds of the USC undergraduate studentbody are from California. 25% of students at Northwestern are from Illinois. (Post #10 is interesting. Air pollution remains as a significant problem in the Los Angeles area according to a report released about two weeks ago.) Overlap schools according to 2007 edition of PR’s Best 361 Colleges: Northwestern overlaps= Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Princeton, Stanford & Chicago. USC overlaps= Stanford, Penn, NYU, Northwestern, Berkeley, UCLA, UCSD, Vanderbilt & Johns Hopkins.</p>