Why I chose USC over UCLA

February 25, 2014

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.



Browse Successful Application Files

jpm13
Rochester


Accepted to Rochester, Rutgers, Fordham, College of NJ, Drexel

Hey! I'm a freshman at University of Rochester Class of 2020 interested in double majoring in Biology and Spanish, eventually applying to med school. I'm passionate about studying science, doing research and learning new languages.
mouse43
Yale


Accepted to Yale, UMich, Cornell, UC Berkeley, UCLA, UCSD, UCSB

Here to mentor and guide you! :)
HarvardCowboy
Harvard


Accepted to Harvard, CalTech, Duke, WashU, UVA, VA Tech, UToronto, Alabama

Advice more down-to-earth than my profile pic.
VivienneEve23
UC Berkeley


Accepted to UC Berkeley, Brown, Claremont (CMC), Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, Northwestern, Pomona, Stanford, San Diego, Vanderbilt, UCSC, UCSB, UCSD, UCLA, Cal Poly, Cal Poly Pomona, Washington

UC Berkeley Class of 2020

New Posts

Winners of the AdmitSee 2020 College Scholarship
Winners of the AdmitSee 2020 College Scholarship
September 30, 2020

We are so excited to announce that for this year’s scholarship, we selected five scholarship winners to maximize the impact of our $5,000 college scholarship prize money....

Load More Posts