Why USC over UCLA?

[DJS3CA]

<p>notaznguy- I’m very proud of you, but let me assure you that your situation is not common.</p>

[hyakku]

<p>

“second off - attention, attention, attention; small vs. large environment”
-UCLA has 25,000 undergrads and 35,000 students overall. USC has 16,000 undergrads and 33,000 students overall. In neither school will you get the same careful attention as if you went to a small liberal arts college with a student body of less than 2,000 students.

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<p>I don’t know about all that. I have personally met with department heads, have been taught three or four of my classes BY the heads of the department (Intro to French, International Relations, Russian literature, etc), and never have any problem contacting an advisor, looking for internship, etc. In fact, I get more emails about internships and jobs than I could want, and with that smaller population comes less resources and variety. I feel (this is my opinion) usc has one of the greatest balances of large university resources with an intimate feel.</p>

<p>

" I don’t think I’ve had a class larger than around 20 -25 people"
-Hmm, keep in mind that lectures and discussions are two very different things. Lectures will tend to be a lot bigger and can have as many as a few hundred students while discussions may be limited to no more than 20. Classes in the humanities will very likely be small, but classes in the sciences, such as chemistry, will be huge. You won’t find 20 people in your organic chemistry class.

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<p>I thought I made a note of that. Obviously in freshmen year you can have your Gen Ed lectures be 100-150 people, once you leave that realm however, you will be hard pressed to find classes of over 30 people, including a good amount of the lectures. This is obviously untrue of classes like chem 1 or 2 (sorry not a chem major don’t know your increments), but that’s largely true even at smaller campuses, as it’s simply logical to consolidate classes based on empirical information.</p>

<p>

“We have a video of a UCLA girl going nuts about how awesome our school was after being here for a day.”
-USC students go to UCLA for parties just as much as UCLA students go to USC for parties. What do you expect, they both are pretty good in terms of Greek Life.

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<p>I don’t know much about UCLA greek life, but Greek life isn’t the only part of USC that’s great for having fun/partying. The BFA kids usually have smaller bashes, there are usually a ton of non fraternity apartment / dorm parties going on, and you can go to Hollywood/downtown. And of course, there’s only one spot to find Trojan football :p.</p>

<p>I don’t know if you sprint or something, but it takes me about 5 -8 minutes to get from each end of campus here at SC, and UCLA is gargantuan in comparison, so I don’t know how that’s possible. I don’t think it’s a bad thing, sometimes I wish USC was kind of bigger just to know what a massive, sprawling campus would be like.</p>

[IMHopeful]

<p>Both are great schools. I would have been very happy to have my daughter go to either – but she chose USC for a variety of reasons and we couldn’t be happier with her experience there.</p>

<p>It is a large school but feels small in many ways. The campus is compact and easy to navigate.</p>

<p>She wanted a strong sports school (she was an athlete there) – and football was/is very important part of campus life for her. And, it is hard to beat Trojan Football (Fight On!)</p>

<p>There is definitely opportunity for partying . . . plenty of opportunity . . . but no more or less than any other big college (and a lot less than some I am familiar with).</p>

<p>Greek life is a presence, but doesn’t dominate. She wasn’t in a sorority, but wasn’t at a loss for social life.</p>

<p>She had large and very small classes – as is typical with a large university – but mostly small once past 1st year and GEs. She had more than sufficient personal attention from professors.</p>

<p>To some, it may come down to cost. If you are in-state CA, I am assuming UCLA would be considerably less expensive. If you are out of state, it may be a toss up.</p>

<p>I don’t know what the current budget situation in CA means for UCLA and the other state universities, but it certainly never seemed like USC was short on funds – and we certainly contributed our fair share for 4 years!!!</p>