A quick search shows a lot of disgruntled boosters!
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/wake-forest-university/1384377-cc-top-universities.html
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/georgia-institute-technology/838244-gtech-cc-top-university.html
It takes more than the highest tuition, being located in socal and marketing that taunts meets financial aid to make it a top school. I know we all love the place, but just a few years ago it was just regarded a rich kid’s school. Just because they started giving more entry to other types of students didn’t make it a top school. They are a master of marketing political correctness that’s for sure. But a school’s cred doesn’t change that fast.
We had a private religious high school in our area that used an older public HS facility for years. At that time 40% of the students went on to college (low). Then they built a shiny new campus - an amazing facility - and all of a sudden it is regarded as a great school. Nothing changed, same staff, same teachers, but because it is in a new place, people think it must be better. It is not, just located somewhere else. Takes more than that. Rankings are all so superficial and subjective, and cc rankings mean nothing nothing at all. Sorry cc.
I have a feeling this is more to do with inertia than any actual opinion that CC sysadmins (or whomever) may have of USC.
^^ unfortunately that’s not the case.
some of us have been advocating, for over 10 years, that the owners of CC take a fresh look at USC .
They have refused to do so.
And to my knowledge have no plans to do so…
Regardless of how or why a list was initially created professing to represent the “Top Universities”, such a list exists. The counter-implication, garnered from supporters of colleges/universities not featured, is that their school is not a Top University. Even worse, there is already a separate category for the Ivy League Colleges. So this CC list is just the top non-Ivy universities. Well, if you are going to have such a category/list and maintain it, it might as well be accurate in some form or another.
California Institute of Technology (no argument)
Carnegie Mellon University (fine to include such. It is likely top 30, but also a tier below USC IMO)
Duke University (no argument)
Emory University (fine to include such. It is likely top 30, but also a tier below USC IMO)
Georgetown University (fine to include such. It is likely top 30, but also a tier below USC IMO)
Johns Hopkins University (no argument. I went there. but I still see it as a tier below USC)
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (no argument)
Northwestern University (no argument)
Rice University (no argument)
Stanford University (no argument)
University of California - Berkeley (no argument)
University of California - Los Angeles (fine to include such. It is likely top 30, but also a tier below USC IMO)
University of Chicago (no argument)
University of Michigan - Ann Arbor (fine to include such. It is likely top 30, but also a tier below USC IMO)
University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill (fine to include such. It is likely top 35, but also a tier below USC IMO)
University of Notre Dame (fine to include such. It is likely top 30, but also a tier below USC IMO)
University of Virginia (fine to include such. It is likely top 30, but also a tier below USC IMO)
Vanderbilt University (no argument)
Washington University in St. Louis (fine to include such. It is likely top 30, but also a tier below USC IMO)
This CC Top University list highlights 19 schools, including a # ranked below USC. The primary issue is that USC seems like an obvious slight (Niche: 10 / USNews: 23). USC is the only university ranked in the top 25 of each which does not appear on this CC list. If CC wishes to keep labeling these 19 colleges as such, I would simply recommend that they add USC… and likely also the University of Texas-Austn.
I sent CC an e-mail a month ago about this…met with deaf ears. With my D at UT-Austin and my son about to go to USC, I’m biased, as many of the posters are. But I agree with WWWard’s point. USNWR is the dominant ranking system in the country and USC is 23rd in USNWR, ahead of several schools that are on CC’s top schools list. Also 10th at Niche, but that ranking is an overall ranking (including campus quality, social, sports, etc.) and some will say that the only ranking that should count is one based solely on academics. But USC is 26th on Niche’s list of best academic schools (22nd if you take out the four LACs ahead of it). Also, USC is trending upward and I would expect that USC Village will make USC even more desirable to students.
I believe that CC is resisting change because they know that they will have to draw the line somewhere and there will be schools left off any new list which CC creates. They probably also don’t want to consider whether some schools listed should be taken off the top school list. But I would say that USC has the strongest case to be on the list, with Wake Forest, GaTech and UT being the other schools with particularly strong cases.
I am cracking up that the University of Phoenix lists Harvard as a peer. If you had asked me to list Harvard’s 200 closest peers, there is a zero percent chance that the University of Phoenix would make the list. lol
Thanks for brightening my day.
Although an old post, I must say that Georgetown is not “known for basketball.” Maybe they used to be for a few years.
USC is popular for sports on the west coast. But in the rest of the country their sports teams are known more for cheating than for winning - and failed NFL quarterbacks. Is there a major university in a worse neighborhood? That could be a top 10 list.
I don’t think Berkeley and Yale are located in better neighborhoods.
Hard to say, @Ballerina016. I know USC has been buying and developing some of the land around the school, but it is still pretty rough. You are right that Yale and Berkeley are also in bad areas, as are UPenn, Johns Hopkins, U Chicago, and others, but USC might still be the worst if you include, say, a 5-10 block radius in any direction. Another 10 years and that might be different if they can afford to keep buying and improving the area.
Anyway, the premise of this thread was silly from the start IMO. Who cares if CC has separated out some schools? I wouldn’t have done it if I had been a founder of the company, but then I am on record as detesting rankings. I don’t think it helped the web site succeed by having them in some special listing, and now it is just a holdover, I feel pretty sure. But changing it now would be a royal pain in the ASCII.
I was on USC’s campus two months ago and this feels awfully overblown to me. The campus is gated and fully secure. Also, we took the bus tour (which extended off campus) and I just didn’t see the horrible neighborhoods that others are describing. Trust me, my wife would have NEVER let our S go to USC if she believed that he would not be safe over the next four years. More likely, it is a problem at night but are students really wandering off campus at night and going into these sketchy neighborhoods?
You walk a 1/2 mile off campus at most schools and the environment is completely different. I went to the University of Illinois and if you walked off campus you’d be in a cornfield. At the University of Chicago (one of the best schools in the world), if you walk a mile off campus you are going to be in a very bad area. Simple solution…don’t do that.
As for the top schools list, @fallenchemist, sure it’s silly but that doesn’t mean that it is irrelevant. The lists serve as an easy jumping off point for high school students and their parents to research schools that are “perceived” as the top schools in the country. Also, the lists essentially serve as CC’s imprimatur of certain schools as being better than others. To have something like that and then not to even consider revisions over the years is not right, IMO. Either get the lists right (better) or do away with them. My two thoughts.
I was half kidding about USC. I kind of went there for residency - which might be in an even worse neighborhood, East LA. I would not pay for my child to spend 4 years in a place like that, even if the school were good - well, maybe Yale.
As LA local and someone who’s child at some point considered attending USC on scholarship, USC location and security reasons were never a concern. As far as making it to the CC top list, maybe one day. I think it’s past reputation as University of Spoiled Children still weights it down, but it should change in a few years. The campus is gorgeous, quality of education is on the rise.
When we took the USC campus tour, we were told that only two years of on-campus housing are guaranteed. This was a huge turn-off. IMHO, private universities (especially those charging so much tuition) should guarantee four years of on-campus housing.
Also, two USC graduate students were murdered just off-campus in 2012, and another was murdered in 2014.
http://www.latimes.com/local/crime/la-me-usc-killing-20150116-story.html
http://ktla.com/2014/11/17/man-who-murdered-2-usc-grad-students-gets-2-consecutive-life-sentences/
So, yeah, given the campus housing situation and the area’s track record of violence, USC was quickly crossed off of our list.
http://dailytrojan.com/2015/05/26/new-usc-village-looks-to-address-housing-concerns/
For those who do not want to click on this article about USC Village and its expected impact on the area, here is an excerpt:
When completed, USC Village will have nine new buildings totaling more than 1.25 million square feet that will include 466 parking spaces onsite, sit-down restaurants, a Trader Joe’s grocery store, a Bank of America, a bike shop, a Starbucks and other retailers. With 2,700 new student beds, the village will give USC the ability to guarantee undergraduates housing for all four years and will open up spaces in other housing projects around campus for graduate students. USC Village is expected to open in the fall of 2017.
I thought it was understood that it wasn’t an on-campus issue at all, that this is strictly about the areas around the campus. If not, then I should have been clearer. And as I said, it has gotten better around USC, but it is still an issue that crime in the area is quite high, even if most of the crime is not against USC students. Because you are right about that also, students are 99% smart enough to use common sense and keep themselves safe. That is true of all schools I know of. I cannot think of a single school in this country that is suffering from a lack of students because of crime against students. Now that isn’t the same as individual anecdotes of parents that won’t let their kids even consider many schools that are in areas that are (or are perceived) to be high in crime, especially violent crime. But overall, just like with USC, those same schools end up with full classes of great students. In that sense it is not silly to ask about conditions around a campus, but it is in the end rather useless.
I agree totally with the latter, personally. I think people already know which schools are perceived to be the strongest academically, and that usually has little to do with which schools are best fits for most students. Focusing on those top schools by segregating them in that fashion “serves” a relatively small percentage of the students, who would have known the schools anyway and hardly need to have them segregated since they are perfectly capable of alphabetizing. It just further perpetuates this ridiculous notion of prestige as the most important factor in picking a college.
“students are 99% smart enough to use common sense and keep themselves safe”
You seem to be implying that the three murdered students mentioned above were not “smart enough” or didn’t use “common sense.” You seem to be blaming the victims. Please explain what these kids should have done differently to avoid being murdered and why it is “rather useless” to be concerned about off-campus safety.
You inferred that, I didn’t imply it in the least, and it is really insulting that you would say that. I didn’t even mention that post. Bad things can happen to anyone at any time through no fault of their own. Frankly, you owe me an apology, but that’s OK, since I am closing this thread per my next post.
As far as my “rather useless” comment, I think that is clear as well. As a group, students at any school in this country are as safe or safer (no doubt the latter) than a typical city resident that is not a student. Because they do live in a bubble with extra security, and they are talked to at length and fairly frequently about staying safe. The number of students that are victims of violent crime, especially from strangers, at any school is minuscule as a percentage. Ergo students that go to virtually any school in the country that practice routine safety tips are likely to stay safe. Nothing is 100%, and certainly if a student or parent wants to be hyper-vigilant and look for the lowest odds, so be it. That doesn’t change the facts that the extreme vast majority of students come out of 4-5 years of undergraduate studies not having been the victims of violent crime, no matter what school you select.
I am closing this thread as it was pointed out to me that all this talk of campus safety really has nothing to do with the initial issue. i should have noticed it myself, but I didn’t. The original issue was brought up some time ago and isn’t likely to change any time soon.