USC ranked no. 22 on US News and World Rankings
The U.S. News & World Report released its 2020 rankings, listing USC one of the top 25 universities, tying with UC Berkeley for the No. 22 spot.
All rankings are decided by scoring colleges across 15 academic indicators like class size, student-faculty ratio, selectivity of admissions and alumni donations and then using the score out of 100 to determine the rank. USC had an overall score of 78. Non-academic elements like social life and athletics, factors that may be important for students when deciding where to apply, are not included.
Factors such as success at retaining and graduating students within six years accounts for more than one-third of a school’s rank, and the report also looks at faculty salary, academic reputation, financial resources and average ACT and SAT scores.
Julie Posselt, an associate professor of higher education at Rossier, said rankings play a large role in a university’s status for incoming applicants.
“Higher education is what we call in sociology a status economy,” Posselt said. “That means that [is] half of money and then half of power. Status is extremely important as a resource. Rankings are one indicator of status.”
Posselt also mentioned that there is evidence that colleges use rankings to manipulate admissions activities to either help them rise in rankings or protect their high position. She says these rankings are calculated using an algorithm that has nothing to do with public perception or scandals that have taken place but rather with endowment, financial resources and characteristics of faculty.
Florence Yang, a sophomore studying computer science, expected USC to move down in the rankings following the University’s involvement in the college admissions scandal. The incident placed a negative national spotlight on USC, when the FBI revealed in March that more than 20 students were admitted to the University through a backdoor scheme using bribery and fake athletic profiles.
“None of the other students had anything to do with the scandal and the other parts of the school still work really hard to maintain USC as such a reputable school, but because of things that certain people did in the school it has to affect the whole reputation and perspective of the school from the outside is disappointing,” Yang said.
Ani Sarkisyan, a sophomore majoring in psychology, said she thinks the rankings should take students’ perspectives of the school and campus issues into consideration.
“By the actual ranking itself like how its created, it is accurate because they didn’t add a new criteria to the ranking,” Sarkisyan said. “They didn’t add how many scandals does the school have, if they were to add that category, no, [USC’s ranking] would not be accurate.”
Aerlynn Ding, a freshman majoring in anthropology and international relations, said that rankings left her confused because of how much they differed depending on what website you looked at and were not an accurate representation reflection of the school.
“Different rankings differ from each other,” Ding said. “For Niche, I think they ranked the social science department of USC pretty high, but for some of the other rankings they only emphasize school of Viterbi, Annenberg and the other schools.”
Posselt said that college applicants should understand that college rankings cannot paint a full picture of what a campus is like and thinks they should research what factors go into a school’s ranking.
“Rankings are so widely used as an indicator of what is best that it becomes easy to forget that what is best can be defined in different ways,” Posselt said.
All rankings are decided by scoring colleges across 15 academic indicators like class size, student-faculty ratio, selectivity of admissions and alumni donations and then using the score out of 100 to determine the rank. USC had an overall score of 78. Non-academic elements like social life and athletics, factors that may be important for students when deciding where to apply, are not included.
Factors such as success at retaining and graduating students within six years accounts for more than one-third of a school’s rank, and the report also looks at faculty salary, academic reputation, financial resources and average test scores.
Julie Posselt, an associate professor of higher education at Rossier, said rankings play a large role in a university’s status for incoming applicants.
“Higher education is what we call in sociology a status economy,” Posselt said. “That means that half of money and then half of power. Status is extremely important as a resource. Rankings are one indicator of status.”
Posselt also mentioned that there is evidence that colleges use rankings to manipulate admission activities to either help them rise in rankings or protect their high position. She says these rankings are calculated using an algorithm that has nothing to do with public perception or scandals that have taken place but rather with endowment, financial resources and characteristics of faculty.
Florence Yang, a sophomore studying computer science, expected USC to move down in the rankings following the University’s involvement in the college admissions scandal. The incident placed a negative national spotlight on USC, when the FBI revealed in March that more than 20 students were admitted to the University through a backdoor scheme using bribery and fake athletic profiles.
“None of the other students had anything to do with the scandal and the other parts of the school still work really hard to maintain USC as such a reputable school, but because of things that certain people did in the school it has to affect the whole reputation and perspective of the school from the outside is disappointing,” Yang said.
Ani Sarkisyan, a sophomore majoring in psychology, said she thinks the rankings should take students’ perspectives of the school and campus issues into consideration.
“By the actual ranking itself like how its created, it is accurate because they didn’t add a new criteria to the ranking,” Sarkisyan said. “They didn’t add how many scandals does the school have, if they were to add that category, no, [USC’s ranking] would not be accurate.”
Aerlynn Ding, a freshman majoring in anthropology and international relations, said that rankings left her confused because of how much they differed depending on what website you looked at and were not an accurate representation reflection of the school.
“Different rankings differ from each other,” Ding said. “For niche, I think they ranked the social science department of USC pretty high, but for some of the other rankings they only emphasize school of Viterbi, Annenberg and the other schools.”
Posselt said that college applicants should understand that college rankings cannot paint a full picture of what a campus is like and thinks they should research what factors go into a school’s ranking.
“Rankings are so widely used as an indicator of what is best that it becomes easy to forget that what is best can be defined in different ways,” Posselt said.