Comment by cletus | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cletus | Hacker News Reader

Honestly, I really don't understand the motivations for some of these parents. Take Lori Loughlin. $500,000? For USC? For two daughters, one of whom clearly isn't that interested, isn't particularly academic and isn't particularly athletic? Like... why?

I can understand if someone bribes their kid into, say, Harvard or Yale Law School. There's a career where going to a good school matters. But this? It just makes no sense to me.

Felicity Huffman may end up being sentenced to 10 months in jail (and, let's face it, might serve only 5) but, still, that's a big deal for someone who probably never expected to go to jail. It's also on the lighter end because of her guilty plea and cooperation with the prosecution. What are these parents who have plead not guilty going to get when they're found guilty?

Add to this the children have to live with the stigma of these actions. I don't have a huge amount of sympathy here because at least some of them were complicit. Posing for photos faking crew, that sort of thing. But still... why would you want to risk your children having to live with that... to go to USC?

USC is definitely a status symbol on the West Coast (especially in Southern California). It's obviously not on the same academic level as UCLA/Berkeley/Stanford/Caltech, but it's still very much an exclusive brand. You don't get it because you don't live here and aren't surrounded by wealthy 16-year olds that yearn to go to USC (often times over UCLA/Berkeley/Stanford).

(Disclaimer: I'm a UCLA alum.)

On average us students make far higher incomes than the average call tech grad.

Source?

Edit: sorry that was rushed. Source of my skepticism - worked with grads from both, tech-wise CalTech is way better and therefore comp follows.

These three are clearly at the same academic level. Way below Stanford and Caltech though.

19: UCLA 22: Berkeley (tie) 22: USC (tie)

https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-unive...

Just so you know, no one takes USNWR rankings seriously -- it's well-known that public schools are dinged due to lower endowments and higher student counts. To wit, the idea that Berkeley is academically comparable to USC is a joke.

Feel free to share whatever ranking validates you.

Regardless of rankings, I'm definitely jealous of USC's alumni network. It's leagues above UCLA/Berkeley (rivaled probably only by Stanford).

Maybe at the graduate level Berkeley should be ranked higher but how are public schools dinged? UCLA has an endowment almost as high as USC’s with comparable student body size. Thinking public schools are dinged because they’re poor is factually wrong.

Also, Berkeley is about where it would be given its acceptance standards and standardized scores outside of EECS are among the lowest in the top 25. The only school where it’s actually getting easier to be accepted year after year.

The student bodies aren't all that comparable. Although they both have 45k students, USC has twice as many graduate students as UCLA and they even outnumber the undergrads.

But really, its pretty foolish to compare an entire school to another. A given program against another given program? Sure. There are fields that USC and UCLA each might be at the top of, and there are fields where they are going to be much worse. That's the real rub with these rankings, combining and binning aspects of schools that aren't related at all. The only thing that's worth looking at is the rigor or research output of a specific program.

All are top 10 in engineering: https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-engineering...

This jives with engineering industries, where USC is a consistent producer of aerospace/mechanical and tech talent. USC is considered a top school in many other research fields as well.

I think it's more likely that you actually know very little about academics at these institutions.

Disclaimer: I work at UPenn (doing research!) and went to USC.

As far as ranking the quality of colleges, USNews is about as garbage as you can get. Anybody with any shred of awareness of what those three schools are would not rank them anywhere near each other.

I love posts like this, "I don't like your data, it is bad, and I have none"

All lists are lame, do you like Niche? UCLA is 29, USC is 20. UCLA has an acceptance rate of 16%, USC 17%. USC SAT range is 1300-1500, UCLA is 1220-1450

I was responding to the poster who said the schools weren't academically comparable. they obviously are shockingly similar. Don't know or care which is "better". But only a radical partisan would argue they aren't similar.

If you want to get into data then at least cite the most recent numbers. I'm not going to bother doing the due diligence you should have done on your numbers, but at least for the USC acceptance rank, the most recent figure is 11%.

Hey, that's a great number, thanks for sharing it. It helps make my point. USC acceptance rate is now better than UCLA, so it is ludicrous to say it is not comparable to schools like UCLA.

How much due diligence do I you think I owe you in a comment on HN? If you google USC acceptance rate, the primary result is 16.6%. I was referring to Niche rankings, which says 17%. I think having a source and an accurate (albeit a couple years old) number is better than 99% of comments. So maybe you believe you are entitled to more, but if so, then maybe you should lead by example and share more data yourself instead of just sniping.

That’s measuring the quality of applicants, not the quality of the school. The subjects you are measuring the school by haven’t even spent their first day in class. A little premature to judge the quality of a product that has yet to be delivered.

> USC is definitely a status symbol on the West Coast (especially in Southern California). > it's still very much an exclusive brand

I would say weirdly exclusively in Southern California. I can’t think of a school with more regional status and less national status than USC. Maybe some of the bespoke NYC schools? Hell, I’ve worked with folks in Oregon and Washington who have thrown out resumes because they went to USC.

I went to Berkeley, it’s a far better public school than Washington or Oregon, who appear to be oddly insecure of their schools’ >40% acceptance rates. Surely our graduates would never make discriminatory hiring decisions that may deprive their company of talent.

Nothing says oddly insecure like creating a new account and repeatedly shilling for your alma mater when you are aggrieved because people happen to be criticizing it obliquely.

> ...I can’t think of a school with more regional status and less national status than USC...

The state schools in the midwest are an example of this - say, Kansas State University. Another one: Catholic schools -- St. Louis University; huge regionally, but not nationally. I was not marinated in NY State, but my impression is that the SUNY schools have some of this too.

Really, I think there are a lot of colleges with a big regional reputation, but not so much nationally.

If you know international students, you can see the same kind of thing play out in a larger stage -- universities that are top nationally, but not so well-known outside the country. Say, Seoul National University, or Tsinghua, or ENS, or some of the IITs or IISc. And incidentally, for these excellent schools, it's not their fault that their quality is not well-known outside their host region.

And you can't forget that these wealthy parents have the same desire as many parents to keep their children close to them. So USC offers enough prestige while keeping their kids closer. It is also prestigious in that it is hard to get in and very expensive.

I’m from the Bay Area and I can tell you that as far as “status” goes, USC and UCLA don’t carry much status at all, if any. Berkeley is considered far more prestigious here. And of course, Stanford.

I grew up in norcal and live in the bay area. Plenty of my high school classmates chose UCLA over Berkeley because they wanted to get farther away from home. Some of them are now med school professors.

The difference between these two UCs is not as great as you might think. Neither has the elite status of ivy league schools, but most people I've run across on hiring committees viewed the two ad fairly comparable.

Note: I went to UCLA for grad school and have many family members that have gone to Cal.

I think they meant that Berkeley and Stanford are the hardest to get into, not that they are necessarily the 'best'. I would assume that anyone who got into Stanford or Berkeley could get into any other school in California.

Most people I’ve run into on hiring committees do not know or care what school the applicant went to, or if they even went to school. That data isn’t provided. Interview performance is the only factor.

What industry do you work in?

This was in law, and I observed it with regard to both undergrad and law degrees.

Did that only apply to new grads with no experience to judge? Or does degree still trump a successful 5-15 year track record?

Big firms care about what schools an associate went to. For partners (10+ years out), they care more about the book of business you'll bring. But there's definitely elitism that lasts well beyond your first few years.

I recall being asked by a visiting partner who was considering having me work on his case where I went to undergrad. At the time, I was a senior associate, so I had a decade of schooling and experience since undergrad.

I don't know how common it is, but once a person I knew had referred to USC as University of Spoiled Children.

It's a pretty common saying among Californians, AFAIK.

More recently known as the University of Scandals Continuous

Or "U$C", which ages very well.

I think it is about status signalling for the parents and the social status prospects for the children more than its about career prospects for the children.

What college your children attend seems to have a big affect on your social status in the US, and the children's social status is definitely hugely affected by what college they attend. Apparently it is much cooler to say you went to USC then the University of Arizona.

Maybe it shouldn't be this way, but I think the parents aren't stupid to be worried about their children's social status in this way.

I’ve met some mothers that place huge value on status signals based on school that their kids attended. I don’t understand it in the least, but I know it definitely exists. It doesn’t matter at all how the school ranks objectively, it’s entirely related to the status among the specific individuals that the mother wants to impress. Often, it’s other mothers whose kids went there.

Fathers might do this too, but I haven’t personally seen it. If I had to guess, the fathers that care about status are probably more likely to “one-up” than “keep-up”. Same insecurities, just manifested differently.

It’s really ridiculous and petty behavior on the adults part, at the expense of the child’s best interests.

A lot of parents see their kids as younger manifestations of themselves, so they take the kids achievements such as getting into a good school as validation for themselves (Good genetics, great parenting etc...) and feel the opposite if their kids fail to do so. This is the only explanation for going so out of the way to essentially "fake" achievement for the kids so you can look better.

If you aren’t familiar with the US education system, it’s a school ranked in the top 20 with an 11% acceptance rate, only twice as high as Stanford’s with a body 4x as large. It's a large school with a massively beneficial and incestuous network. Based on LinkedIn numbers, 1 out of 4 people in SV that didn't graduate from Stanford went to USC. Go around talking misinformation about that school in particular and see what wonders it does for your career.

Top 20 in letting applicants bribe coaches to get them in, maybe. Any rag with USC as a top 20 university isn't worth the paper it's printed on.

Well I went to Berkeley, it’s questionable why we’re even ranked in the top 25 with an acceptance rate 30-40% higher than UCLA or USC this year whom like you said, don’t deserve to be in the top 20. Imagine what it would be without EECS. Berkeley grads need to pay attention to what’s happening with the school, it may be the only college in Californi where applications have been going down for the past 3-4 years.

Google says the acceptance rate is 17%. Would love to see your source on 25% of non-Stanford alumni SV people being from USC. Anecdotally, I’ve met one.

Google cites the rate from 3 years ago. From the horses mouth on the 11%:

https://dailytrojan.com/2019/03/28/usc-fall-acceptance-rate-...

Not sure where you are getting that wild number. There are 4,206,862 people in SF Bay Area on LinkedIn and 28,676 have USC listed on their profile. That's....not 1 in 4.

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