A totally honest thread...from long long ago

[bejazd]

Originally Posted by honeychile

To a lot of us east of the Mississippi, all those California schools soemtimes seem to be interchangable!

Honeychile, Cal and USC are NOT interchangeable. Oh dear, I think I am feeling faint. I do believe you have committed an atrocious faux pas, but as you are not from California, we will graciously forgive your inadvertent error.

[33girl]

Originally Posted by bejazd

Honeychile, Cal and USC are NOT interchangeable. Oh dear, I think I am feeling faint. I do believe you have committed an atrocious faux pas, but as you are not from California, we will graciously forgive your inadvertent error.

Well, now you know how we feel when people confuse the University of Pennsylvania (aka Penn) and Penn State. Yipes.

[honeychile]

I feel shame.

I suppose I better learn which is which before my godchildren start going to school in Cali!

[jwsteele]

Originally Posted by bejazd

Honeychile, Cal and USC are NOT interchangeable. Oh dear, I think I am feeling faint. I do believe you have committed an atrocious faux pas, but as you are not from California, we will graciously forgive your inadvertent error.

I don't want to turn this thread into something completely different, but if you are talking about campus culture then the two are vastly different...if you are commenting on academics/prestige, USC has been climbing rapidly and according to the 2008 US News Rankings Berkeley is 21 and USC is 27...still a slight difference but I think the next poster's comment about it being similar to the difference between Penn and Penn State is extremely exaggerated.

But great to read a USC rush story, even from an alumni. It's crazy how much the campus are changed...there are several Jewish girls in the "top" sororities and there seems to be no problem for them during rush.

[aephi alum]

I've just read through this thread... wow. It's an eye-opener to read a rush thread where women were, ah, "encouraged" to pursue or not pursue a given sorority because of their religion. (Not to make you feel old, but you rushed before I was born!)

When I rushed in the early 1990's, religion was - I won't go so far as to say it was totally a non-issue, but it was less of an issue than it seems it was for you. There were four NPC sororities (none historically Jewish, but I believe each had Jewish members) and one newly-founded local whose members were all Jewish... I gravitated straight to the local, which is now a chapter of AEPhi. Off the top of my head, I can think of several Christian alums and one Hindu alum. Times change.

LML,
aephi alum

[Football Fan]

To add to JWSteele's comments.....
Recently, I did a report on SC admissions and a survey of their graduate/undergraduate rankings. According to an official at SC who wrote to me it is just as difficult to be admitted to Cal, UCLA or SC. For those of you out of California SC is a smaller private university. UCLA and Cal are much larger and part of the public Univ. of California system.
For information purposes SC had 33,754 applicants for a freshman class of 2964 (2763 last year)entering in 2007. National Merit Scholars were 220 and 5 were National Achievement Scholars. Unweighted GPA of entering freshmen was 3.7.
For this academic year there were 9 Fulbright Scholars, 1 Marshall Scholar and 1 Rhodes Scholar. It has one of the most diverse student bodies in the nation.
If any of you Trojans wish to PM me I have the rankings of most of the graduate and undergraduate programs.

[PeppyGPhiB]

Originally Posted by Football Fan

To add to JWSteele's comments.....
Recently, I did a report on SC admissions and a survey of their graduate/undergraduate rankings. According to an official at SC who wrote to me it is just as difficult to be admitted to Cal, UCLA or SC. For those of you out of California SC is a smaller private university. UCLA and Cal are much larger and part of the public Univ. of California system.
For information purposes SC had 33,754 applicants for a freshman class of 2964 (2763 last year)entering in 2007. National Merit Scholars were 220 and 5 were National Achievement Scholars. Unweighted GPA of entering freshmen was 3.7.
For this academic year there were 9 Fulbright Scholars, 1 Marshall Scholar and 1 Rhodes Scholar. It has one of the most diverse student bodies in the nation.
If any of you Trojans wish to PM me I have the rankings of most of the graduate and undergraduate programs.

When I was in college, it was kindof a joke that USC was for kids that couldn't get into UCLA. But it's not really that way anymore. It has gotten so hard to get into 75% of the UC schools (public) that USC (private) has benefitted from the competition as well. I almost went to USC, but admittedly if I had to apply today with the grades I had in high school, I would probably not get in. And FORGET about UCLA or Cal...you have to split the atom to get in there now. All of the "big name" schools in California - and there are a lot of them - get an insane amount of applications for the small number of spots, meaning they can truly take the cream of the crop. At least with private schools they typically consider a number of other factors beyond gpa and tests, and they generally can be much more subjective in their admissions.

In terms of size, I wouldn't call USC small, though. It's huge compared to my alma mater (3,000 undergrads). It's pretty big for a private university.

[bejazd]

USC really is in a class by itself here as far as being an old, large, private residential university in the heart of the city. With a sticker price of somewhere around $200K for four years living on campus as an undergrad, I pretty much expect that the students there are generally quite serious and studious. I think I read somewhere that less than 2% of USC students receive a "full ride" in scholarships. Even though it's totally unique I think to some extent for Greeks in California, its sort of seen as the "flagship" of the Greek system.

As far as admssions to Cal and UCLA, I think its been pretty difficult to get into either for some time, and it's not much easier to get into any of the other UC schools. According to my son's HS counseler, even if you qualify for admission to UC with the min GPA, ACT/SAT scores, and have taken all the pre-reqs in HS, meaning 4 years of math, 4 years of English, 4 years of science and social science, 3 years of foreign language, the only schools that guarantee admssion are UC Merced and UC Riverside. So that means if you've taken that many academic courses as a HS student you didn't spend a lot of time in HS taking elective courses like drama or art or music. I think that's pretty impressive!

[Football Fan]

According to the website for admissions 60% of SC students receive need based financial aid.
SC requires about the same course requirements as the U.C. system. To apply for the School of Cinematic Arts (1) a film portfolio must be included. The School of Music (5) requires an audition.

SC is smaller compared to some of the bigger public universities such as Ohio State with about 55,000 students or private universities such as NYU and Brigham Young with much larger enrollments.

[TSteven]

Originally Posted by bejazd

Even though it's totally unique I think to some extent for Greeks in California, its [Southern California] sort of seen as the "flagship" of the Greek system.

How so? As in how do you define "flagship"? The reason I ask is that I was under the impression that Greek Life was older and more established at Cal Berkeley.

[FSUZeta]

bejazd, how precious of you to so graciously point out honeychiles faux pas.

i think all the chapters at fsu in the mid to late 70's had jewish members. we had several members who were jewish and it was never an issue with them or us.

[AnchorAlumna]

Hey, ellebud, you and I seem to be about the same vintage. It's truly surprising to me that the U of Alabama at that point was a tiny bit more "progressive" than USC. I remember my sophomore year (1971-72), the rush chair explained that all the Jewish girls were dropped "as a courtesy" to the Jewish chapters, SDT and DPhiE. By then most of the other groups were OK
to pledge non-Christian girls, although there weren't that many. By my senior year, DPhiE had folded, and SDT pledged a (Christian) great-great-niece of one of our Founders. The gloves were off, so to speak, and by then the Jewish girls were considering ALL the groups, not just the Jewish ones. It probably hurt SDT in the long run, although they are still hanging in there.

[ellebud]

It is truly interesting to see that Alabama was more liberal than SC! Yes, SC is climbing in the national rankings. When I was there and on the row it was very heavily Pasadena/San Marino based. That area was old line money and very WASPy. I was from the west Los Angeles area...very show business-y, liberal and Jewish. UCLA and Berkeley (now called Cal) were very liberal and public schools. I have friends who have daughters in some of the top houses. And one girl in particular is a trailblazer. She is Jewish of Persian background. She has broken all traditions: she is living on campus, studying in college..and not keeping kosher. I think the last part she hasn't mentioned to her mother...and that might be a good thing. They are very traditional.

[FSUZeta]

you last statement made a question pop into my head--do the traditionally jewish sororities that own houses and serve meals keep kosher?

[catiebug]

How would you know a PNM was Jewish? Was it part of the rush application? Was the drop based on the PNM's last name (some last names are associated with Jewish families)? Was it based on that the PNM looked Semitic? I have to wonder.

I am half-Middle Eastern. My father, who was Iraqi, was Roman Catholic; I look like I could be Jewish. My mother, who is Episcopalian (as am I), divorced my father and married a man who later adopted me, giving me his last name of Miller (considered by some to be a Jewish last name). So if I did not list that I was Jewish on my rush application, based on my looks and maiden name, some sororities might think I was Jewish and cut me as a "courtesy" to the traditionally Jewish sororities - is this the case?

Originally Posted by AnchorAlumna

I remember my sophomore year (1971-72), the rush chair explained that all the Jewish girls were dropped "as a courtesy" to the Jewish chapters, SDT and DPhiE.