University of Southern California

The University of Southern California is a private research university founded in 1880 in Los Angeles, when the city had about 11,000 residents. It began as a small Methodist-affiliated college and grew into one of the largest private universities in the western United States. Its main University Park Campus is about three miles south of downtown, next to Exposition Park, and its Health Sciences Campus is in Boyle Heights.

USC is made up of the Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences and more than 20 professional schools. They include the Viterbi School of Engineering, the Marshall School of Business, the Gould School of Law, the Keck School of Medicine, the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, the Price School of Public Policy and the School of Cinematic Arts, which dates to 1929. Graduate research also takes place at the Information Sciences Institute in Marina del Rey, the Institute for Creative Technologies and the hospitals of Keck Medicine of USC.

USC enrolls about 47,000 students, and graduate and professional students outnumber undergraduates. Roughly a quarter of students are international, with the largest groups from China and India. Nobel chemistry laureates George Olah and Arieh Warshel have served on the faculty. Alumni include filmmaker George Lucas, astronaut Neil Armstrong and architect Frank Gehry.

Most graduate enrollment is in professional master's degrees, especially in engineering, computer science, business, communication, social work and public policy. Viterbi offers many of its master's programs online. PhD students are usually funded through fellowships and teaching or research assistantships. The academic year runs on semesters. Los Angeles gives graduate students access to the entertainment, aerospace, health and technology industries, and the Metro E Line links campus with downtown and Santa Monica.

In the Grad School Navigator directory, University of Southern California lists 286 graduate programs across 50 subjects: 172 master's programs and 86 doctoral programs, with the widest choice in music, health & medical sciences and biology. University of Southern California holds rank 42 in the GSN Overall University Ranking.