Off Campus Apartment Searching in the USC Area

First off, I want to reiterate that USC is a first class school. Besides it's Back to Back National Champions Football Team, we also have incredible students. The Class of 2008's average SAT scores surpassed UC Berkeley's and UCLA's. This is a testament to the talent that USC is attracting as it becomes further elevated in the national college rankings.

However, one of the few negative things about going to the University of Southern California is the housing situation. USC has a relatively small campus . The University Park Campus which is the main undergraduate campus is enclosed in an area that has a perimeter of 2 miles. Within that campus, are few on campus dorms and apartments. The newest ones being Parkside International Suites and the older ones being New/North Residential Halls and Marks Tower and Pardee Tower. All of which are filled with great people that help contribute to a great collegiate dorm atmosphere. Sadly though, because of the housing shortages, housing is only guaranteed for Freshman. So, after the 1st year, you have to enter a lottery to try to secure on campus housing or university housing. In 2005, a number of 1200 couldn't help me and and my roommates secure housing. The numbers went all the way to around 6,000, if I remember correctly. One of the main reasons for that is that Webb Tower, an apartment building, was being closed for renovation.

So 7 of the guys that I decided to room with next year and I had to start apartment hunting. That number would trickle down to 2 other guys as we had to break apart in order to secure good housing. This is just one of the tragedies of being rookies in the housing search.