I only applied to schools that I would have appreciated attending. However, to be honest, the University of Southern California was not my first choice when I began the application process. Many people in my family are Trojans: my parents, uncles, aunts, and two older siblings went to USC. I was expected to at least give it a bit of consideration, but my first choice was the University of California, Berkeley… I was declined there. Luckily, I got into USC, UCLA, UC Irvine, and Pacific, all of which had good business or economics programs (my potential majors).
At the beginning of the acceptance period, I narrowed my choices to UCLA and USC because of their business programs. Obviously my family members took offense to my mere consideration of UCLA due to our fierce rivalry. The largest factor that influenced my decision to go to USC was the fact that the Marshall School of Business is one of the best in the country, and that UCLA had no focused business school. Rather, I was admitted to UCLA’s business-economics program at the Anderson school of management. This program is highly revered by California natives, but it still is not a pure business program.
Moreover, as much as people say that there is no difference between a public and private school, there is. There aren’t as many opportunities for a student to become known at a public school, and there isn’t as much guidance. My sister ended up going to UC Berkeley, where she never had her own specific counselor to guide her through undergraduate years. Meanwhile, I’m just a freshman and I have a Marshall (business school) counselor and an economics counselor for my minor.
There are many reasons why I chose USC over UCLA: the beautiful USC campus, amazing the professors… I could go on and on, but let me just leave you with this: Your first choice should be the perfect fit to your personality, academic/social/economic needs.
As those acceptance letters start pouring in, I wish you the best of luck!
The author of this post is a freshman at USC. You can read more about him by unlocking his full profile.
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