Why is UCLA seen as more prestigious than USC?

College Search & Selection
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<p>The ongoing conference re-alignments show clearly that FOOTBALL dominates the $$$ equation for college sports. Basketball schools like Kansas were not even on the radar and remain in danger of not having a major conference tie as more chairs are moved.</p>

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<p>This isn’t true, except maybe in North Carolina and a few other basketball hotbeds. The 2011 NCAA championship basketball game drew about 21 million viewers—well down from a peak of 34.3 million who watched Michigan v. Duke in 1992. The regional finals draw less than half that. The last time the NCAA championship game drew as many as 30 million viewers was 1994. In 5 of the last 8 years viewership of the NCAA championship game has been below 20 million, depending on the teams.</p>

<p>ESPN says over 27.3 million viewed the 2011 BCS championship game last year, plus another 700,000 or so on ESPN.com, the highest ever for a webcast of a sporting event. And ESPN is a cable channel. Previous BCS title games on broadcast networks had a significantly larger viewership, right in the 30 million range. But the 27 million who watched on ESPN were still enough to make last year’s BCS title game the most-watched program ever, of any kind, on cable television. </p>

<p>College basketball seems to be declining in popularity, along with the NBA. I think a lot of it is overexposure–too many games on too many channels, too much of the year, until people are sick of it.</p>

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<p>Ha, you almost had me there. The telling figure is the average pay for Assistant Professor, the bait that is offered to new hires. USC averages $91.5K vs $84K for UCLA. And as described in the link, higher UCLA salaries are a result of negotiated overscale pay- which means department heads/Deans cobbling together retention packages for profs fielding offers from private schools. UCSD just lost out big time to Rice because they couldn’t come up with the $. I expect similar defections at the other UC campuses.</p>

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<p>The only people who actually care how much new hires make are the new hires themselves. They’re generally new, untenured faculty who add little, if any prestige to a university. They still have their training wheels on so to speak. And it doesn’t make USC ‘better’ just because they pay assistant professors more. </p>

<p>The only professors that matter are fully-tenured, and some associate professors. That’s it. But go ahead and try to skew the organization of the data in whatever way you’d like to make USC come out on top. Just realize that your arguments, overall, will fall on deaf ears.</p>

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<p>that website you listed was highly dubious. I’m much more inclined to trust chronicle over “uclafaculty.org” but use whatever sources you want.</p>

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<p>The only thing that UCLA and UCSD have in common is being part of the same system. First of all, UCLA is leaps-and-bounds ahead of UCSD in terms of prestige and endowment. (1.8b compared to like 0.4b) UCSD is sort of close to being a top UC, but UCLA and Cal are still greatly ahead of it. Not to mention that, at least when the three UCSD professors moved to Rice, UCLA and Berkeley reported no significant faculty losses. </p>

<p>Unless UCLA loses Terrance Tao, or another professor of comparable quality (e.g. David Kaplan, Tyler Burge, etc.), i don’t really care.</p>

<p>The schools in the UC system differ so drastically in quality it’s absurd to compare them. Just because UCSC is facing heavy budget problems, it doesn’t follow that UCLA is.</p>

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<p>I feel like undergrad is pretty close. UCLA is seen as extremely hard to get into because of the high number of applications. You can’t interview at UCLA, whereas you can interview and donate $ to USC to help get in, not to mention legacy. Most students who go to UCLA also got into USC, most students who go to USC were rejected from UCLA.</p>

<p>With that being said, I feel the worldwide prestige of UCLA is mostly due to the high ranking grad programs. UCLA has many grad programs that rank up there with the Ivy’s, USC does not. USC is mostly popular in the LA area because of the good football program since LA doesn’t have an NFL team.</p>

<p>Med School: Primary Care
UCLA #16
USC #92</p>

<p>Med School: Research
UCLA #13
USC #36</p>

<p>MBA Program
UCLA #13
USC #21</p>

<p>Law Program
UCLA #16
USC #18</p>

<p>Economics
UCLA #14
USC #50</p>

<p>Math
UCLA #8
USC #51</p>

<p>Political Science
UCLA #11
USC #62</p>

<p>Psychology
UCLA #3
USC #40</p>

<p>Sociology
UCLA #9
USC #39</p>

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<p>SMCGuy is correct – it is very clear looking at the Naviance chart of our HS that (at least based on GPA and test scores) it is much harder to get into UCLA as compared to USC.</p>

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<p>Just to add a few more examples to SMCguy’s very helpful list:</p>

<p>Philosophy (per Philosophical Gourmet)
UCLA #9
USC #17</p>

<p>Anthropology (per NRC)
UCLA #18
USC not ranked</p>

<p>Classics (per NRC)
UCLA #7
USC #26</p>

<p>Linguistics (NRC)
UCLA #2
USC #20</p>

<p>Chemistry (NRC)
UCLA #15
USC #81</p>

<p>Computer Science (NRC)
UCLA #12
USC #26</p>

<p>Earth Sciences (NRC)
UCLA #16
USC #59</p>

<p>Undergrad engineering (per US News)
UCLA #20
USC #27</p>

<p>The pattern is consistent across almost all fields. UCLA just generally has superior faculties, which equals prestige in the academic world, which in turn makes it easier to recruit and retain top faculty. This is not widely understood outside the rarefied world of academica, but pure academic prestige–not US News rankings, but the prestige reflected in NRC rankings–is the principal coin of the realm among ambitious academics. Money is secondary. You might occasionally see an academic trade down to a lower-ranked school in his or her field for more money, but not often. Entry-level faculty will often choose a place like UCLA over a USC because even if the entry-level pay is a bit less, UCLA is seen as a stronger place from which to start one’s career. And if they move from there, it will usually be to a higher-ranked school in their own field (again, think NRC rankings, not US News ranking). Of course, if a top private school–think HYPS here–offers both more money and more prestige, it will be hard to refuse. But money alone usually won’t do it if it means trading down on the prestige scale in their given discipline.</p>

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<p>I have no idea how Los Angeles-area people view the schools, and if this is “well known.” I can tell you that here in Chicago, people would be generally indifferent between the two and wouldn’t have any clue of one being easier-to-get-into or harder-to-get-into or loves-their-legacies or daddy-warbucks-sends-his-kids-here. All this “prestige” and reputation that you’re talking about is only relevant in certain circles.</p>

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<p>“Right, which gets into the “and why should anyone care what people who don’t know what they’re talking about think”? I don’t know why we’re supposed to care about the perceptions of ill-informed people.”</p>

<p>This post bears repeating.</p>

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<p>it depends on the area and the people in regards to this. USC is viewed as the better university by people who live in the area where USC is (unsurprisingly) and also by USC’s diehard alums (also unsurprisingly). UCLA is generally viewed as a better <em>historically</em> academically focused university by people who are into academics, and people who live in the area surrounding the school as well. </p>

<p>That being said, USC has been getting A TON of funding this last year, so that could change, but i wouldn’t expect its reputation to catch up anytime soon.</p>

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<p>I have to ask: Why is USC ranked higher than UCLA on USNWR?</p>

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<p>“I have to ask: Why is USC ranked higher than UCLA on USNWR?”</p>

<p>US News is total BS! I think it has to do with $$$ (endowment).</p>

<p>US News National Rankings have USC #23 and UCLA #25 (only since 2010).
US News Wold Rankings have UCLA #34 and USC #107.
US News also ranks UCLA higher for almost every major.</p>

<p>US News pretty much contradicts themselves, how can they rank USC higher nationally, but UCLA significantly higher World Wide? This proves methodology can swing rankings any way. You should look at a mix of ranking organizations for a true feel. You’ll find UCLA consistently outranks USC.</p>

<p>[World’s</a> Best Universities; Top 400 Universities in the World | US News](<a href=“http://www.usnews.com/education/worlds-best-universities-rankings/top-400-universities-in-the-world?page=1]World’s”>http://www.usnews.com/education/worlds-best-universities-rankings/top-400-universities-in-the-world?page=1)
UCLA #34
USC #107</p>

<p><a href=“http://mup.asu.edu/research.html[/url]”>http://mup.asu.edu/research.html&lt;/a&gt;
UCLA #9
USC #16</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.shanghairanking.com/ARWU2011.html[/url]”>http://www.shanghairanking.com/ARWU2011.html&lt;/a&gt;
UCLA #12
USC #46</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/college_guide/rankings_2011/national_university_rank.php[/url]”>http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/college_guide/rankings_2011/national_university_rank.php&lt;/a&gt;
UCLA #2
USC #18</p>

<p><a href=“Education - Image - NYTimes.com”>Education - Image - NYTimes.com;
UCLA #11
USC #76</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.thebestcolleges.org/rankings/top-50/[/url]”>http://www.thebestcolleges.org/rankings/top-50/&lt;/a&gt;
UCLA #41
USC didn’t even make the list</p>

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<p>bay:</p>

<p>while I admit to being a fan of USNews, most (many?) of its ranking criteria favor private schools.</p>

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<p>With those “certain circles” being the informed circles, whom you earlier seemed to suggest were the only circles that matter.</p>

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<p>The “informed” circles she was referring to were informed enough to know that USC is a private versus public university.</p>

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<p>For many, many years, UCLA was clearly more prestigious than USC. USC has only been on the rise for the past 10 years. Before that, it was roughly the level of the midtier UCs. </p>

<p>Seeing the huge gap that it has closed, it makes sense that it’ll take some time for perception of USC to catch up.</p>

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<p>You should look at things closer.</p>

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<p>In general, these “world university rankings” are almost completely focused on things like graduate studies and research, specifically in the areas of empirical sciences (for which a school like UCLA is renowned for, whereas USC…not so much). They have very little bearing on the quality of undergrad, or the quality of anything really besides science/engineering.</p>

<p>Why is this even a topic of concern? Boo hoo, USC ranks one spot higher on some highly subjective ranking. Get over it.</p>

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<p>Why is this question even debated?
UCLA is international. It has, and always will have, a larger domestic and international appeal and name recognition. </p>

<p>1) The fact of the matter is that UCLA earned its prestige through its incredible research. The internet was discovered at UCLA, the first open heart surgery was performed at UCLA. USC has only recently began to improve in rankings and sadly, a large part of that is tied to financial contributions and other sorts of money-related entanglements. UCLA earned its prestige through its long tradition/history of academic achievement, a reputation of hard work nonexistent at USC. UCLA is a research oriented institution that gained its prestige through legitimate research. </p>

<p>2) UCLA is an internationally recognized mega university. USC’s international recognition is unparalleled compared to that of UCLA, especially in the asian nations. UCLA still has a stronger domestic name appeal as well. USC is known well in southern California. UCLA is known well in southern California, northern California, the east coast, and around the world. Many argue the “UCLA” letters constitute the most internationally-recognized college insignia. </p>

<p>3) UCLA admissions is FAIR! USC considers legacy and affirmative action whereas the UC’s are held under strict scrutiny for employing such methods. Everyone who gets into UCLA has a high GPA, and a high SAT. USC, on the other hand, often has random students whose academic achievements are not on the same level as those to enter UCLA. USC is nicknamed “University of Second Decision” for a reason in that many UCLA rejects go to USC. I’ve had many friends accepted to USC due to their race or other legacy-related factors, but rejected from UC Berkeley, UCLA, and UCSD, all of which look at academic success regardless of miscellaneous circumstances. YES, the UCs do use affirmative action to a small extent, but definitely not the extent USC does. </p>

<p>4) The general negative a stigma attached to USC also makes me view USC in a negative light. Many people view USC students as “rich” and “spoiled.” UCLA students are never placed in such a negative light. The general perception of students says a lot about the university’s overall reputation. UCLA has more of a “positive” perception attached to it. They are both viewed as prestigious, but many continue to view USC students with the common generalizations mentioned above. </p>

<p>5) People argue USC is more sought after. What a joke! UCLA is the most applied to school in the nation, and America’s number 1 public dream college. USC does not compare in terms of number of domestic and international applicants. </p>

<p>6) They both have their strong sides undoubtedly. BUT OVERALL, most would agree that UCLA is higher ranked. Yes, USC is stronger ranked in some areas, but OVERALL, UCLA is a better school and higher ranked in a majority of its departments. </p>

<p>On a personal note- When I was younger, UCLA’s name surrounded me. I have known about UCLA since the 1st grade. I never even heard of USC until my sophomore year of high school. Also, UCLA = better location, nicer campus, more affordable.</p>

<p>****There is only one DOMESTIC ranking where USC is ranked higher than UCLA. But you must consider that that particular raking (UNSWR I believe) takes into account ALUMNI CONTRIBUTIONS as 10% of its overall ranking. The privates are front loaded for this reason, as you can see by that particular ranking website.</p>

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<p>Oh, did Al Gore attend UCLA? On a serious note, while the first ARPANET transmission was between UCLA and Stanford in October 1969, the discovery should be credited to a more obscure source.</p>

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<p>is it true that ucla is mostly asian tho? if so i will go to usc for diversity reason</p>