Looking back on my thought process as I was choosing colleges, I am relieved to notice how I have gotten everything I expected from USC during my undergraduate years. One of the main things I wanted as part of my undergrad experience was research. The reason I was interested in research was by the time I am done with my undergrad, I wanted to make sure that I have the utmost knowledge about the field I am going into and what the career options are available, for me, the best way to get this knowledge was to have a research experience by working with professors who are doing interesting research in my major.
I knew that USC has many of these undergraduate research opportunities and I also knew that all I had to do to be part of a research I am interested in was to contact one of my professors and ask them if I could work in their lab. Once I realized this, I started looking for Civil Engineering professors that do research in Structural Design focusing on things that would interest me. And it wasn’t that hard for me to find out that there were multiple researches that I envisioned myself being part of and learning the most from.
I also wanted to attend a university that will provide me with career opportunities I can learn more about while I am still in school. I knew networking would be much easier coming from USC through the big alumni network. Starting my sophomore year, I was participating in Viterbi Career Services events where I was being interviewed by USC alumni that have taken the same classes as I was, and that fact in it of itself has made the interview process go much smoother.
Being in a great city as LA was also a plus for USC, it is a fun city to live in and a diverse place to learn a lot from. There are always fun things happening somewhere in LA and it is also possible to find a great park or beach for a relaxing day.
It might seem like a stressful decision to make when choosing a college, but it really is not if you feel like a school can offer you what you are looking for. It was easier for me to choose USC because once I identified what I wanted from my Undergraduate education, it was easier to see that USC had almost everything on my list.
