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<p>C’mon Goldenboy. We both know you’ve made posts citing UCLA’s exceptional international prestige. Nationally i will agree that it is significantly less prestigious than itnernationally, but it’s still very prestigious nationally.</p>
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<p>I agree.</p>
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<p>Also put more succinctly ;)</p>
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<p><em>ahem</em></p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/13505514-post8.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/13505514-post8.html</a></p>
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<p>Let me rephrase that a bit for you. </p>
<p>Those were only “fears” brought on by the fear-mongers, i.e., the academic types that want/need more money. Tenure is tenure. And, as those folks know a sinecure is a sinecure.</p>
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<p>All the points about buying prestige (through faculty and students) are true. However, are the “moving up” trends that tangible? Where were USC and WUSTL/Washu ranked a decade ago? Has their reputation really changed that much in the past years? From my Tex/Cal vantage point, a look at the students and families that are impressed by those schools has not changed a darn bit --and neither has their views about the public schools in California. </p>
<p>And neither are the views of the people who can see those schools for they are. What was true in 2002 is still true in 2012. And, fwiw, USC and WashU still think that are better served to refuse to make their CDS forms available. Just as Chicago for that matter! The only difference is that finding how to “upgrade” your database has worked pretty well for Chicago. Not so much for UWannabe!</p>
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<p>I’ll bow to your expertise on USNews rankings. But it takes a LONG time to change the academic pov. Thus, go back even farther. A generation ago, WashU was a nice midwestern university that no practically one ever heard of (and likely had 99% of its students within a 4/5 hour drive). A generation ago, one could literally drive up to Southern Cal’s campus and apply and register on the first day of classes. </p>
<p>(full disclosure, 'SC offered me a merit scholly back in the day, and I never even sent in an application…)</p>
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<p>Can I steal your term? Or does cc have ALL IP rights? :D</p>
<p>Rankings from 1988 to 1997</p>
<p>WUSTL 23 19 22 24 18 20 18 20 20 17 17 16 17 15 14 12 9 11 11 12 </p>
<p>Rankings from 1998 to 2007</p>
<p>WUSTL 17 16 17 15 14 12 9 11 11 12
CAL—23 22 20 20 20 20 21 21 20 21
USC—41 41 42 35 34 31 30 30 30 27
UCLA–28 25 25 25 26 25 26 25 25 26</p>
<p>Most people are familiar with the last five years. Here’s 2007 to 2012</p>
<p>WUSTL 12 to 14
CAL—21 to 21
USC—27 to 23
UCLA–26 to 25</p>
<p>Whatever they have been doing in the past 5-7 years does not seem to pay many dividends.</p>
<p>In the 70’s Duke was just another above average private school for rich southern preps and a slew of Ivy rejects.</p>
<p>^ Does that still apply today, barrons?</p>
<p>Amazing what winning basketball can do. But they did go on some successful faculty raids too. Really beefed up the liberal arts although that English thing famously backfired.</p>
<p>[The</a> Function of Dysfunction - Advice - The Chronicle of Higher Education](<a href=“The Function of Dysfunction”>The Function of Dysfunction)</p>
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<p>Yeah, but look at the LT:</p>
<p>WashU from 23 to top 12</p>
<p>'SC from 41 to 23, (and more importantly to their alums, bypassing UCLA)</p>
<p>Both increased their ranking by ~50%. Of course, just like in the SAT, it’s much harder to move from 700 to 750 than it is from 600-700.</p>
<p>Barrons: there are a still whole host of schools that “have a slew of Ivy rejects”; the relevant discussion here, however, is that 'SC has joined that group. :D</p>
<p>USC’s Provost said in an article from “Trojan Family Magazine”, “USC’s ambition is to be the greatest research university of this century.”</p>
<p>But it’ll take them about a century to get there.</p>
<p>So true, but it will take every other University “a century to get there” as well.</p>
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<p>Undoubtedly, UCLA admits a lot of kids from lousy high schools who may be top-tier in rank, but aren’t as prepared as those from good high schools and who lack respectable scores, and are admitted under the guise of holistics. But, after all, it is a freaking public school, and has a duty to educate those from poorer less scholastic backgrounds, usually first generational college students. These students don’t have mom and dad to fall back as reinforcement in their quest to complete college.</p>
<p>Also, what contributes to the lower quartile scores is that UCLA doesn’t superscore and it double-counts SAT and ACT scores from a material amt. of students. The latter especially would affect the lower end, the bottom quartile. I would imagine most if not just about all u’s would not double count scores because one score, the highest, is the determinant in gaining someone admission to a u. Though this is true for UCLA, the U does count > 100% scores.</p>
<p>And no, the CDS would not manifest this as you might have stated before; this is only brought to light at UCLA"s admission website. Typically, those reporting SAT’s and ACT’s is ~125%, in some years in the past, 130% or more.</p>
<p>Regarding race, USC lumps all International students together, as does UCLA, without breaking them down into racial components. The higher amt. of Int’ls at USC is comprised of primarily Asian students, from China and India. When one walks around campus at USC, the Asian mix seems extremely high a large part because of its large graduate student population, which is even a higher mix of Asian students.</p>
<p>UCLA has, by far, the greater preprofessional programs in business, law, medicine. USC has an outstanding undergrad bus program, but doesn’t send nearly as many graduates into MBA programs as UCLA. USC isn’t even on the same plane as UCLA for future JD’s and MD’s.</p>
<p>hey guys i know this is UCLA vs USC but i was wondering what cali fans debating this thought about UNC Chapel hill vs USC…it seems USC has risen in the last 5 years but most people i ask in new england think chapel hill is better…</p>
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<p>EXACTLY my point. UC has a different mission, and fulfilling its mission means that it recruits lower stat kids, which affects its ranking relative to other private schools, including USC.</p>
<p>btw: I’m not persuaded that superscoring the SAT makes that much difference, or at least I haven’t seen any data to support that it does.</p>
<p>USC’s bottom quartile is 1970, whereas UCLA’s is 1760. (source ipeds) That just seems to me to be too much of a spread that is the result of superscoring.</p>
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<p>Surprisingly, USC does have a large proportion of a few Pell Grantees. At 18%, it is (one of?) the highest % of really low income students out of all of the top-ranked private Unis. Significantly more than any Ivy, for example. Props to 'SC for that.</p>
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<p>*Point 1. USC’s actually at 19%</p>
<p>*Point 2. Columbia actually has 26% pell grant recipients, so it has more than USC.</p>
<p>*Point 3. Harvard (and Stanford and Chicago) is at 17%. Not sure how you’d define ‘significantly’ but 2% doesn’t seem to be significant (at least to me.)</p>
<p>[Economic</a> Diversity Among the Top 25 Ranked Schools | Rankings | Top National Universities | US News](<a href=“http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities/economic-diversity-among-top-ranked-schools]Economic”>http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities/economic-diversity-among-top-ranked-schools)</p>
<p>I prefer to use ipeds – the federal db – as source, since the feds ought know who they give money to. </p>
<p>Ipeds has Harvard at 10% Pell grantees, about where it has been for a long time. But good point about Columbia: ipeds has C at 18% Pells. (Perhaps the difference is that ipeds only reports Harvard College, whereas USNews include HES and other programs?)</p>
<p>Regardless, the point is that the ‘University of Spoiled Children’ is no more.</p>
<p>Not sure how Chicago is jumped into your post, since it is not an Ivy…</p>
<p>Neither is Stanford, but since these elite private schools are at the same percentage level, according to USNWR, i thought i’d include them as well.</p>
<p>i don’t have much objective to add to this discussion except to say that UCLA’s prestige from its research reputation has been around longer. It also used to be more selective. I still remember the very first time when I heard of UCLA on a sketch on MadTv with the job interviewer asking him "what was what is UckLah college), and the job applicant responding it’s UCLA.</p>
<p>I still respect UCLA more to this day due primarily to the reputation of their grad programs. Also, while not particularly meaningful, is how UCLA doesn’t attempt to “buy” students as USC does by throwing vast amounts of money via their trojan scholarships to about 25% of their student body and then selectively admitting weaker students in their spring admits program and having their stats excluded from fall.</p>
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<p>Lower stat kids for the most part for UCLA, but higher average/median class rank/gpa, than USC. There’s no way in the world that Cal and UCLA have 97%+ top decile per IPEDS, CDS, whatever source you want to mention, but it certainly is higher than USC’s %'s. I would put UCLA and Cal at ~ 80% top decile and USC at 50%. This means USC goes fishing for higher scorers and can drop down in class rank, which causes a larger app. pool, all other things being relational. </p>
<p>To see this, you’d have to look at admits from various high schools in CA, and outside of it and see whom UCLA admits vis-a-vis USC. And I don’t think it’s a spring-admit phenomenon as blah2009 stated, although USC does try to circumvent admit stats by taking those under spring admits, as opposed to Cal which is more for logistical reasons. But then again, USC doesn’t produce a CDS. </p>
<p>UCLA as a UC has a decently larger responsibility than Cal does in admitting at-risk students. This is because this feature within UC is consigned or assigned to geography. There are more at-risks in the LA area, than all of NorCal combined. They do this to give those at-risks more of an option of commuting to school to save money because at-risks=poorer-socioeconomic-background.</p>
<p>UCLA feels it can prop these poorer kids, mainly Hispanic students, who don’t have nearly the scores the others do (blacks are still horribly underrepresented) by giving them a high amount of tutorship. </p>
<p>Add that scores can indeed be bought. If you take a 1600-scoring student who only took it once and had a bad prep course and enrolled him/her in a top-flight course or a private tutor, this student’s score can be brought up probably to a 2000+, provided he/she had top-tier grades. </p>
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<p>You’re still missing one of my points. UCLA double-counts a good portion of SAT’s and ACT’s along with not superscoring. Double-counting will affect the lower scores first and foremost because a lot of these scores should be dropped.</p>
<p>Resolve this for me if someone would…</p>
<p>Which school’s professors make a higher median/mean salary? </p>
<p>As opposed to UCB which tried to protect Cal’s rep, both UCLA and USC have med schools – which is I’m guessing was UCB’s intent in mentioning this because Cal doesn’t have an M-school.</p>
<p>This idea of USC buying out UCLA profs of a department might be a symbolic move to try to show that USC pays more, which may not be true.</p>
<p>Drax, my friend, you make me laugh.</p>
<p>I have a question. You rely a lot on class rank and GPA, rightfully so because you are a bruin and that is how UCLA looks at applicants. USC and every other prestigious university goes off of SAT. Interesting, right? Why is that? Why in the world would any university rely more on a Standardize test? Standardize…</p>
<p>Wiki states that the SAT is a test is intended to assess a student’s readiness for college. So silly! GPA let’s colleges know how well a particular student did at THEIR school and thus if they did well 4.0 or better, then they must be more college ready than a 3.9 student. Genius! </p>
<p>Wrong, why there is a STANDARDIZE test is because no two high schools are the same. They don’t have the same opportunities and resources. Yes 4.3 student at Average High is great. He joined a few clubs, took a few APs, and even did track and field. That student must be a better student than 3.78 Student at Watts High whose brother is a drug dealer, mother is a waitress, and dad is none existant. But wait, 3.78 never did track but volunteered at the homeless shelter in between studying. Let’s also throw in student C, who is a privilage snob from Dalton Prep in NYC. He has been given everything in life and received nothing but the best education. Even with all the private tutors, student C only gets a 3.699 at Dalton. Shoot. Average HS grad is the most college ready and must be admitted. </p>
<p>But wait, in order to get into university all student must take this silly test to see how they college ready they are. Obviously top 10% and 4.3 is going to come out on top. </p>
<p>Average HS, scores 1950
Watts HS, scores 2250
Dalton Prep, scores 2375</p>
<p>Oh no Dalton Prep is the most college ready according to this silly test. Well Dah, he had an excellent education, tons of tutors, and his parents spent a ton to ace this silly test. Well he took the test and yes he is well prepared. This is life. Some people will have better resources. </p>
<p>But Watts HS scored higher too. Well Watts is a brilliant student naturally that has over camed adversity. But she is more college ready and more well rounded that Averge HS student. Damn she had an advantage too she is naturally gifted. </p>
<p>Average HS ended up not being the most college ready. Even though he played sports, took a few APs, and was top 10%. He was average. </p>
<p>A standardize test was needed to show how truly college everyone was, because the education at Average, Watts, and Dalton are not equal. Yes some have better resources and skills than others, but again that is life and that is how the real world works. </p>
<p>But hey, I’m a Trojan and that is how USC does it, so that is how I make sense of it… And Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, and most universities in America. </p>
<p>Please excuse any errors, I typed this on my cell.</p>
<p>Also the super scoring argument is old and tired. You have no evidence that it actually makes a huge difference. So please try for once to not use that arguement.</p>