The University of Southern California

Here is my objective look at SC:

My personal experience at USC has been a very positive one. I currently attend the Marshall School of Business and I personally think it's a solid business school, but one that has some major room for improvement in certain areas. I think the classroom size issue is a moot point seeing that nearly every business school in the country has large classes for general business courses. If you believe that this is only an issue at Marshall then you are fairly naive. Also I see a lot of people griping about the Marshall curve. Marshall isn't the only that implements this curve, actually a lot of top schools like NYU Stern use the curve as well. It fosters a competitive environment and is intended to make the school's degree more valuable, but really from the student POV it's just a pain in the ass. If you want to go to grad school, stay away from Marshall and any business school that has the same curve!!!

Some improvements that SC needs to make is the quality of faculty in certain departments. It was disheartening to me to have a great professor and a below-average professor in the same semester - this was a common occurence. A school of this caliber should have good to great professors all around, not mediocre ones that can't teach very well.

The student body is mixed with some extremely bright kids and some very not so bright kids (to put it nicely). I personally think the environment around Marshall is friendly and that it is far from the cutthroat atmosphere usually associated with top business schools (Leventhal is a different story). You'll find a lot of kids from different socio-economic backgrounds. There certainly are an abnormal amount of rich kids here that put up a snobby front, but it certainly isn't as large as people make it out to be. Overall I think for the most part everyone is friendly.

So why should you come to Marshall? Simply for the networking. I can't tell you how awesome the networking is at USC and Marshall. The Career center does an EXCELLENT job at preparing students for life after college. You'll find firms visiting the school 3-4 days out of the week. The alumni are so enthusiastic about their alma mater that you end up having a major leg up against students of other schools. USC alums dominate Southern California and this REALLY becomes a major asset to have if you're looking to live in CA after graduation. Marshall also has a great mentorship program where they set you up with an alum that provides you with real world knowledge and background. Once again an excellent program. Reflecting back on my experience at SC I realize that I've grown so much as a person. When I was picking between SC, UCLA, Berkeley, NYU, etc. I wanted a school that was spirited, provided a solid education, valued me as an individual, and set me up for excellent career oppportunitites. SC provided me with all of those, and I will always be a lifelong Trojan.