<p>arcadefire1027 - you thought I was serious. One son is an engineering freshman. His goal is to graduate, be successful and become a UCLA donor.</p>
<p>Ditto Shibykin!</p>
<p>My husband is a Stanford grad and we’ve never made a donation, except to buy tickets for football and basketball games. But then, he’s an underpaid high school teacher. 
UCLA Anderson School regularly sends requests for donations, as well. (he has an MBA from there.) I think most of their grads can probably part with their $$$$$$$, though. :)</p>
<p>**Corbett said:</p>
<p>It may seem painful to first pay taxes, and then write a second check directly to your school. But then again, that’s exactly what the Stanford and USC grads do**</p>
<p>collegemom: Yeah looking back…that post didn’t look serious, haha. My bad. First impressions can be deceiving!</p>
<p>collegemom92: I’m in engineering and I just told my mom I wanted to do that too. 
UCLA deserves more than just to rely on government funding only to be affected by bad times for the state.</p>
<p>Honestly, it doesn’t worry me much. USNews rankings have always been questionable and they make it questionable on purpose.</p>
<p>
I’m skeptical. A school of USC’s size has never been capable of that much prestige. I’m certain we don’t have the number of competitive students in California to support a USC sized Northwestern, even draining the top students from Berkeley and UCLA. This is, of course, ignoring the fact that many UCLA and Berkeley students have no interest in paying for private school and that ultra-wealthy privates such as the Ivy League will recruit away another chunk of prospective elite USC students. The average NU student has a 2155 SAT. USC has 2100 (which isn’t too far off) but you guys superscore.</p>
<p>I’d love for the UCLA-USC rivalry to somehow end but I have a feeling that it will persist for many years to come.</p>
<p>**</p>
<p>welcome to cc, where people care about ridiculous ranking systems. **</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>because people would never come from out of state to go to USC. Or Northwestern. Or Rice. Or Vanderbilt. </p>
<p>(for the record, I know people from Virginia at all of those except Vandy, and I’m sure there are plenty of OOSers there, I just don’t happen to know any).</p>
<p>Also I know that I personally got a 2110 on my SATs, not superscored, seeing as I only took the test once (my ACTs were better) and I was admitted to USC. I don’t quite understand your point.</p>
<p>Yes, USC is a big school, but we’re about the same size as UCLA, which I think we’d all agree to be a prestigious university, and smaller than NYU, which is also pretty famous, albeit not quite so prestigious, and Michigan, another prestigious school. Why shouldn’t a large private school be able to attain the same prestige as a large public school?</p>
<p>leashes - you’re husband went to Stanford (and Anderson) and is now a high school teacher? I’m sorry, but what a waste of a high education and obviously great mind. He should have easily been making 6 figures straight out of the MBA program, pushing 150+, but now he probably barely clears 50k. WHAT A MISTAKE!!!</p>
<p>
Even if that’s true, it doesn’t matter, because USC is not limited to competitive students in California. According to collegeboard, USC now draws 41% of freshmen from out of state. Berkeley and UCLA do not have this flexibility: as state schools, their mission is to primarily serve state residents. They only have 8% and 10% out-of-state freshmen, respectively. </p>
<p>Like it or not, this is another factor that works to USC’s long-term advantage, in addition to their higher degree of alumni financial support. For UC schools, it is politically infeasible to admit large numbers of top students from outside of California. USC, on the other hand, has no problem whatsoever recruiting nationally and internationally. </p>
<p>
As noted above, USC is increasingly reliant on out-of-state students. It is likely that in the future, the majority of USC undergrads will be from out-of-state; this is already the case at other highly-ranked private schools in California, including Stanford, Caltech, and the Claremont Colleges. For out-of-staters, USC tuition compares favorably to non-resident UC tuition. </p>
<p>
There are undoubtedly plenty of highly qualified applicants who see the Ivy League as their first choice. However, each of the Ivies has an 80-90+% rejection rate. So there is also a lot of interest in alternatives.</p>
<p>
Schools like NU, Rice, and Vandy are nationally recognized as Ivy alternatives for other parts of the country. USC’s long-term strategy is to establish itself as the nationally recognized Ivy alternative in southern California. </p>
<p>This is a slow process, one that takes decades, but they are making steady progress. Since 1991, USC has risen 28 places in the US News rankings. Don’t know if they will reach parity with NU, Rice or Vandy in 5 years, but they may do so eventually.</p>
<p>The only problem that I see with USC is that they still take just about anyone for the entering sophomores, juniors. I know a lot of high school students who were mediocre in high school earning merely Bs and Cs. They went to community colleges, Arizona State, or other lower-ranked schools, and then, through connections, transferred into USC for their sophomore to Junior years. Granted, they did not get into the more prestigious schools such as the undergrad engineering or business schools, but they did get in, nonetheless. I doubt that any of the top 15 schools do anything remotely close to that. I don’t know if Vandy or NU does that either. One of the problems with the rankings is that they tract the entering Freshman class’ SAT scores and HS rankings. They don’t track incoming sophomore or juniors. Colleges know this and cater to this by pushing less desirables to the second semester frosh term or ask them to take a year of comm college first.</p>
<p>And the UCs also do this: they will take anyone from the community colleges as long as they maintain a certain gpa in community college regardless of that students’ high school transcript gpa or SAT scores. It is a well known fact in California that if you ‘blow’ high school, you get a second chance at the community college for getting into Berkeley. That is NEVER possible for UPenn, Harvard, etc.</p>
<p>“leashes - you’re husband went to Stanford (and Anderson) and is now a high school teacher? I’m sorry, but what a waste of a high education and obviously great mind. He should have easily been making 6 figures straight out of the MBA program, pushing 150+, but now he probably barely clears 50k. WHAT A MISTAKE!!!”</p>
<p>Maybe they’re an old couple and the husband is old and doesn’t want the stress of his previously 200k job due to health issues and wanting to spend more time with his family, so he became a teacher at 65+ years.</p>
<p>If not, then yes, I agree. Waste of money and waste of education. Might as well have gone to some local state college to be a teacher.</p>
<p>
Well what I was getting at is that USC is huge. Stanford and Caltech are all small universities. If USC ever fell par to Stanford, it would like be adding 4 Ivy League universities! </p>
<p>You do understand my point? Even recruiting nationally and internationally, USC is going to have to push aside a bunch of universities to get there. USC would need 4x more endowment and other resources than counterparts such as NU. That’s what I find to be an obstacle for the university. Sure Berkeley has been done. But after Berkeley is unchartered territory.</p>
<p>The only way I imagine USC could rise to the top without having to run over 4 universities for every tier it jumps is if it successfully recruits international students. Most internationally renowned universities are research giants, however, and USC lags behind in this department.</p>
<p>USC enrolls more international student than any other American university</p>
<p>[International</a> Student - USC Graduate Admission](<a href=“http://www.usc.edu/admission/graduate/international/]International”>http://www.usc.edu/admission/graduate/international/)</p>
<p>The website is for graduates, but the claim applies to all students.</p>
<p>
For ranking purposes, universities are evaluated based on the stats for the entering freshman class. It’s true that USC is rather large by this measure, with 2,869 entering freshman (stat from collegeboard.com). So USC does face the challenge of maintaining high admissions standards while simultaneously filling a large freshman class. Of course, this challenge is greater still for UCLA and Berkeley, which are even larger. </p>
<p>Nonetheless, USC’s freshman class is not extraordinarily large, even by Ivy standards. Penn had 2,404 freshmen, and Cornell had 3,181. </p>
<p>
You may be right. However, USC may have figured this out too.</p>
<p>According to [US</a> News](<a href=“http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/national-most-international]US”>http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/national-most-international), USC now ranks near the top, in terms of percentage of international students among the undergraduate student body. It competes strongly with the Ivies, MIT, Stanford, etc. in this regard, and is far ahead of the UCs (which are probably forced to cap international enrollments, since their primary mission is to serve state residents). Some current numbers:</p>
<p>15 % Carnegie Mellon
12 % Caltech
11 % Harvard
10 % Columbia
10 % Penn
10 % Princeton
10 % USC
9 % Yale
9 % MIT
7 % Stanford
5 % Berkeley
5 % UCLA</p>
<p>In terms of the total number of international students (not as a percentage), USC is [number</a> one](<a href=“http://opendoors.iienetwork.org/?p=150817]number”>http://opendoors.iienetwork.org/?p=150817).</p>
<p>Actually, I’m pretty sure the freshman class is over 4,000 people this year. I don’t know where that number’s from, but it doesn’t make any sense–we have over 16k undergrads, 16k/4=4k.</p>
<p>^Yeah, Cornell doesn’t like transfers.</p>
<p>Like lagunal pointed out, USC also needs to shake off its dependency on borderline transfers.</p>
<p>UCLA and Cal are coerced into doing this by the state. Its a mystery why USC partakes in the practice.</p>
<p>
It makes sense if you add in the transfer students. A total of 4,239 new undergraduates enrolled at USC in 2009, which is consistent with 16K/4. However, only 2,869 of the new students were incoming freshmen. The other 1,370 new students entered as transfers. UCLA and Berkeley also admit large numbers of transfer students.</p>
<p>The US News rankings only consider the stats of the incoming freshman; they don’t look at incoming transfers.</p>