University of Southern California

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University of Southern California

Spring 2014

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1. Preparing for the exchange

To kick-off your exchange process, you will receive an extremely detailed (and definitely not last of its kind) email from Sean O’Connell, USC’s Director of International Business Program. He sends this email to Spring students around mid-August to early September, so don’t be worried, if you don’t hear anything from USC before or during the summer.

Even though Sean’s emails seem often much longer than needed and he repeats himself often, at the end of the day, this is all designed to ensure you complete all the numerous, required preparations for being able to study in the great US of A. As the VISA application process doesn’t change that much during the years and is well covered in previous exchange reports, I won’t dwell on this topic; by following Sean’s instructions carefully, none of us faced any problems in getting our paperwork and other needed registrations in order before the exchange.

One tip with regard to VISA applications would though be to try and book an interview time at the U.S. embassy (required from every applicant) as soon as possible, as closer to late

November and December, free slots are truly scarce due to the holiday season (e.g. yours truly managed to create unnecessary “Christmas stress” for himself on this front, by booking an interview time too late and receiving a VISA only two days before his flight)

Insurance

In USC, every student must have an insurance fulfilling VERY STRICT requirements set by the school. A student has basically thus two options; either purchase an incredibly expensive insurance offered by USC (around $900 for Spring semester, out of which however $200-300 are refunded at the end of your USC stay) or purchase a private insurance that fulfills USC’s requirements (you still need to pay the USC insurance, but as you arrive, you will apply for an insurance waiver and receive a refund for the paid insurance).

Still some 2-3 years ago, Aalto students had no problems with waiving USC insurance with standard travel insurances from Finnish insurance companies – however, lately USC seems to have made their requirements so much stricter, that none of us managed to waive the mandatory insurance with our Finnish travel insurances (and believe us, we put quite a bit of effort into this battle). Thus, we all ended up purchasing the USC insurance. Diep Nguyen however mentions in her travel report (Fall 2013, USC) that US local insurers offer special insurance plans to USC students(she mentions ISO Insurance, www.isoa.org), that were

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we didn’t think of this during our USC stay, but I recommend asking her for more details on the issue.

Housing

Basically you’ll have three options how to choose where to live. You may search a place from the private market (outside of USC patrol area), sub-lease a place to stay via USC targeted housing (USC managed, Fraternity house or private housing in USC patrol area) or go with the easiest way, which is to apply for USC housing (university managed housing).

Looking for private housing outside of USC patrol area is problematic in two senses; if you’re looking for housing close enough to USC so that you could e.g. bike or long-board on campus, the area surrounding USC is considered as one of the most unsafe areas in L.A. Thus living near USC, but outside of USC patrol area is unadvised by school officials and local students (we personally or none of our friends never had any problems around USC area, however we

essentially always stayed within the patrol area that is an area of few miles around the campus). On the other hand, if you really want, you could live in a nicer area, further away from campus (e.g. one group of exchange students rented a house in Hollywood), but this would basically require you owning/renting a car during your stay and suffering from L.A. traffic jams (which believe us, are really as bad as people say) every time you need to go to school.

USC university-managed housing offers indeed the easiest option, located on USC campus and is where most of exchange students (probably around 90%) live. This is also where all three of us lived ( two of us lived in 2 bedroom, 4 person apartments at Pacific and one of us lived in a 2 bedroom, 4 person apartment at Founders).

We wouldn’t however recommend 2B4P apartments, for two main reasons:

1) we believe you could find better value-for-money by checking private subleases at USC area, as they offer usually much nicer and bigger apartments – the 2B4P apartments are indeed quite small for 4 people to share.

2) People living in USC housing after their Freshman year are typically of not the “most outgoing” type, as most people move in either to their frat/sorority houses after their Freshman year or rent a private housing around USC campus together with their friends. Thus, we think looking for a free room in private housing near USC area, would allow you better meet more outgoing USC students and thus get easier integrated into the USC community.

If you however do decide living in USC housing, Regal Trojan and Stardust are some of the best options there. The good thing about all the apartments offered by USC Housing is that they’re all located within the DPS (Department of Public Safety) patrol area. There’s also a “matching” questionnaire when you apply for University Housing, which tries to accommodate you with

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like-minded people. However, this questionnaire is pretty useless, and the apartment and the roommates are assigned by random.

So, if we had to choose now where to live, the clear choice would be non-university managed housing on campus. Although these apartments are a bit more expensive, you’re able to get your own room or to share it with some of your friends or probably more outgoing people. There a lot of private apartments on Figueroa Street, Hoover Street and around Menlo Avenue. The best ways to find apartments for rent are probably their own websites, Craigslist and the USC housing Facebook group. There’s also a big upscale apartment complex called Lorenzo in the nearby, which has very nice amenities, such as own pool, gym and basketball courts. However, the apartments are expensive and the location is a bit off campus (though they have their own shuttle system).

2. Exchange Studies

General Information

Even though the spring term started January 16th, we had to come to USC Campus a week before for orientation and to move to the university housing. We had to choose our courses already two months in advance since exchange students had the privilege for spots in classes. The choices you make in advance are not binding; I, for example, switched all my courses as we had the possibility to do that until the end of January.

USC is a huge school with over 30 000 students, so naturally the course selection is just as vast. It seemed like an impossible task to choose only 3-4 classes and arrange them so that the class hours don’t cross, especially as most courses there had mandatory attendance in classes. We were only allowed to take undergraduate classes and there were some limitations within faculties, but professors are very flexible and you could get to attend a course which was said to be

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full just by talking to the instructor.

The teaching method was very similar to our high school teaching with mostly small classes, mandatory attendance and a significant part of the grade consisting of participation in class. All the classes were in English naturally.

Orientation was very brief but thorough. There were a couple of classes by the exchange instructor, Sean O’Connell, whom we could turn to in any matter during the exchange. As a general tip in course selection, I would advise gathering a preliminary list of subject areas/courses that might interest you and then checking www.ratemyprofessors.com or any other university lecturer rating website to see, what courses the best rated professors are lecturing. The reality is that even though a course might have a super interesting syllabus, a poor lecturer will usually result in a poor course. Thus, I would advise going with a “professor first, syllabus second” approach, as especially for an exchange semester where you have tons of other activities to engage in, getting yourself interested in a course that’s lectured poorly might be rather challenging.

Courses

 ECON 303: Intermediate Microeconomic Theory (4 units / 8 ECTS)

- Lecturer: Eric Matolo

- Content: “Decision making by business firms, consumer preferences and behavior, uncertainty, competition, monopoly, labor and resource markets, efficient resource allocation, externalities, and government policy.”

- Workload: Lightly moderate

This class, as its name might suggest, offers some insight into macroeconomic theory beyond the compulsory introductory course at Aalto. Most of the topics discussed during the course were familiar to me from the afore-mentioned course, but covered in more theoretical depth. In workload-sense, the course is a good choice for an exchange student, as it had no mandatory attendance and grading consisted of a final exam, mid-term and 4-5 in-class quizzes (these you had to attend). Also technically, this course isn’t challenging to anyone with an Aalto

background, as it involves only some rather basic math.

Generally, this was the course I liked the least; the lecturer was quite boring, with very standard and unimaginative lectures that followed the course textbook very strictly. So all in all, I

wouldn’t recommend this course, unless you’re extremely interested in microeconomics and need a prerequisite course to prepare you for further studies of the topic.

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 ECON 305: Intermediate Microeconomic Theory (4 units / 8 ECTS)

- Lecturer: Mark Moore

- Content: “The determinants of aggregate income, employment, and inflation; economic fluctuations; fiscal and monetary policy; financial markets; the national debt.”

- Workload: Moderate

This was by far the best course I took at USC. Prof. Moore was an exceptionally great lecturer; he has earned his PhD in Economics from MIT (so he knows what he’s talking about) and he chose to teach at USC, from the many universities that offered him a spot, as here he could pursue his Theater School studies (so he definitely knows how to present his ideas interestingly and lively to his audience). Even though this course is text-book course, as due to curricular restrictions it must provide students with knowledge of basic macroeconomic theories and tools to enable further studies of the topic, Prof. Moore constantly links the theories he presents to current U.S. & global macroeconomic issues. He also either started off or finished each lecture by telling his view on some contemporary economic issue (which wasn’t

specifically related to the lecture’s agenda) and these were without exception very interesting. The course was again optimal for an exchange student with grade being based entirely on 2 midterms and 1 final, with no mandatory attendance to lectures. As often is with good

professors, Prof. Moore is also demanding and his exams really tested you’re knowledge of the topics he taught – thus either had to listen really well on his lectures or read the text book for hours. All in all, I would strongly recommend this course to anyone even slightly interested in macroeconomics, as it provides both a great theoretical base for further studies of the topic and a good insight into several U.S. & global macroeconomic issues.

 ECON 357: Money, Credit and Banking (4 units / 8 ECTS)

- Lecturer: Michael Sproul

- Content: “The money, bond, stock, and other financial markets; portfolio choice;

determinants of asset prices and interest rates; inflation; interactions between financial markets and government policies.”

- Workload: Lightly moderate

Once again, a great course for travelling, as grading was based on 4 quizzes (one of which could be missed) and a final exam, with no mandatory lecture attendance. Lecturer is a fairly

sympathetic, old man, with some witty anecdotes about economic history.

All in all, this was an OK course. The lecturer covered majority of the relevant topics in the field and managed to present some pretty complex issues in an easily understandable way. However, there seemed to be a general emphasis on memorizing the ideas and theories in the way

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from and how they could be applied on wider basis of issues than the direct applications presented in the lecturers examples (somewhat reminded me of high school, rather than university level teaching). Also, Prof. Sproul is a strong advocate of “backing theory” of money, which often, in my opinion, caused him to present & discuss several key topics of the course in a non-objective manner.

 IOM 424: Business Forecasting (4 units / 8 ECTS)

- Lecturer: Robertas Gabrys

- Content: “A variety of forecasting techniques used by a variety of businesses. Emphasis on learning to apply these techniques to real data.”

- Workload: Moderate

This was probably the second best class I took. Prof. Gabrys is an extremely sympathetic and energetic, young professor from Lithuania, who really tries to get his students excited about applied statistics. The course is of strong applicatory nature, as some of the theoretical concepts familiar from Kauppis’ math & stats courses are applied to address forecasting problems for companies. Grading supports applicatory nature of the course, as you are graded fully on 3-4 homework projects + 1 extensive final project (about 8-16 pages of text and you’re free to choose basically any real life forecasting exercise as your project topic).

The course also teaches the students some useful technical skills, as both Excel and R are used throughout the course; Excel-wise, the course unfortunately didn’t offer much new compared to BSc level Aalto courses, but R was entirely new to me and thanks to the course, I managed to develop some basic skills in the software. Courses workload is also definitely manageable for an exchange student, as apart from the more extensive final project, homework projects didn’t require too much hours in the library.

 BAEP 454: Venture Initiation (4 units / 8 ECTS)

- Lecturer: Patrick Henry & Luke Brown

Venture initiation course was by far the most useful and interesting course I had – and

according to most of my course mates the best class they had at USC so far as well. Once you’re choosing courses before you get to USC, you can’t choose this class, because normally you need to have some prerequisites (for example Introduction to Entrepreneurship, a Business Plan course and a Feasibility analysis course), which most schools don’t offer. Also, most importantly you need a business idea that you have started to execute already. Luckily, I had one, so I got to work on that Idea for the whole semester.

The course was very intense: we had classes twice a week and every Tuesday we had to pitch our ideas from different perspectives and we were handed an assignment to be delivered the

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same Thursday. So all the Wednesdays went pretty much working on this class’ deliverables. The group was very small. There were only 10 ventures, but still there were 2 professors who are professional venture capitalists, so we got some very useful feedback and pieces of advice every single class. So anyone who was serious about their venture wanted to go there not only for the grade but to get real-life suggestions on how to start and scale their venture. The grade consisted of the weekly deliverables and the pitches.

 BAEP 450: Fundamentals of Entrepreneurship (4 units / 8 ECTS)

- Lecturer: Elissa Grossman

Fundamentals of Entrepreneurship –course is meant to give insights to an entrepreneur’s everyday life by going through the entrepreneurial process from idea creation to how one can eventually execute it. We had 4 different projects during the course, which consisted most of our grade. One of our assignments was the famous “E-challenge”, where your team is starting a micro-company, and your team is aloud to sell your product or service for one hour only. After that we had to interview an entrepreneur of our choice and write a paper about it. During the third assignment, the “Spot the Opp Challenge” we were presented a few ventures looking for funding and we had to write about the pros and cons and the opportunities of one of the ventures. The final project was called “The Opportunity Project” where everyone had to come up with a business idea, pitch it to the whole class in a one-minute-video. After that 8 ventures were voted, and the rest of the class divided to work on those ideas and deliver a paper on the idea on how it would be executed.

The rest of the grade was based on 3 quizzes, peer feedbacks and participation.

I don’t feel I gained anything from sitting in that class 4 hours a week. I don’t feel I learned anything new. Even though we worked in a team on an idea of mine on the “Opportunity Project”, I don’t think the questions and the assignment helped me at all on how to proceed with the idea. The course was too theoretical for an entrepreneurship course.

 BAEP 423: Management of Small Businesses (4 units / 8 ECTS)

- Lecturer: Greg Autry

The syllabus was basically very similar to BAEP 450’s, but this was supposed to be a lot more book-oriented. Even though this was a very book-oriented course, it didn’t mean that the course wouldn’t be practical. I got a lot more out of this class than out of Fundamentals of Entrepreneurship. We had a quiz nearly every class, and we had to read a book called “The Monk and The Riddle”, which tells a story of an entrepreneur trying to raise money from a venture capitalist. Even though it sounds like a boring storyline for a book, it turned out to be a very interesting one as it explained the point of views of both the VC and the entrepreneur. We

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had a lot of guest speakers, and quite notable ones as well: for example the director John Singleton, the author of the book “The Monk and the Riddle” and many more. The class had a trip to Elon Musk’s SpaceX, but as not-US citizens, exchange students weren’t allowed to go. The grade consisted of the following components:

o Weekly Quizzes 15%

o Participation 5%

o In-Class assignments 15%

o Individual Project 10%

o Case Write Up 10%

o Group Project Presentation 10%

o Group Project Video 10%

o Midterm 25%

 FBE421: Financial Analysis and Valuation (4 units / 8 ECTS)

- Lecturer: Ricardo Carvalho

The main goal of this class was to develop and use the tools of financial analysis to evaluate the performance and asses the value of individual companies in an industry context.

75% of the grade was based on the final and midterm. The rest of the evaluation was based on case studies and final project. The structure of this class was pretty similar to the Finance classes at Aalto, however there isn’t any bachelor classes focusing on this subject so I decided to enroll in this class. This course basically introduced different methods to implement

valuations of companies and projects. The best thing about this class was that it nicely

combined theory and practice. During the lectures we discussed about many real life examples and applied the learned theory to these. We also had two bigger cases, which were similar to the case studies at Aalto. In the end of the class we had a final project, in which we had to value a public company and then give a presentation about it. By doing these projects I really learned how to use these different methods in practice. I would recommend this class to anyone willing to strengthen their valuation skills and ability to understand how the valuations are evaluated.

 ITP 104Lx: Web Publishing (2 units / 4 ECTS)

- Lecturer: Patrick Dent

Web publishing using HTML, CSS and other Web technologies. Concepts and theory of Web site creation, page layout and production. Introduction to advanced topics.

The evaluation of the class was following:

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o Participation and labs 15%

o Examinations 20%

o Major Project 35%

In this course we had every week one lecture and a lab after that, which was basically a small project on the topic discussed in the lecture. These projects were usually about creating or editing some part of a website. In the end of the class there was a final project, in which you had to use everything learned from these assignments to create a web page of your own. Some students also gave a short presentation about their project in front of the class. Although it was nice to learn the basics of HTML and CSS, I don’t think this class wasn’t worth the effort.

 ITP 165x: Introduction to C++ Programming (2 units / 4 ECTS)

- Lecturer: Raymond Kim

This course teaches students problem solving skills through the use of the C++ programming language. The evaluation was based 60% on assignments and the rest on midterm and final. The professor covered the different subjects pretty quickly and I found it sometimes a bit difficult to keep up to the pace. Therefore I decided to buy the book and studied the topics at home after the lectures. Probably someone who has prior experience of programming doesn’t need it. The weekly assignments turned out to be pretty challenging towards the end of the class but the teaching assistants and other students in the class were really helpful. However, I learned a lot by doing the assignments and also their importance on the grade is considerable. I think this course was really interesting and useful for a person like me, who has no prior

programming experience. I think this class is definitely worth taking for students who have little to none programming experience.

 JOUR 380: Sports, Business and Media in Today’s Society (4 units / 8 ECTS)

- Lecturer: Jeff Fellenzer

An inside look at the symbiotic relationship of sports and the media -- from the

interdependence of sports and media, to the coverage of sports in newspapers, magazines, radio and television. The economic and ethical issues involved, the conflicts of interest, the history and current status of sports coverage in American media today.

This course provided a good outlook on American sport business and its history, and focused especially on media’s point of view. The grading was based on three midterms and a final, and none of these were too demanding. Still this class turned out to be maybe the most interesting one I had at USC. In the beginning, I didn’t know too much about American football or baseball but after this class my knowledge on these sports is much better. Maybe the best part were the numerous guest lectures by widely-known sports figures, such as Keyshawn Johnson or George

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Ravelin. Professor Fellenzer also shared many interesting stories and experiences from his time as a sport journalist. There were really interesting discussions about a current or historical topic in sports, and it was intriguing to see, how single events in sports history have affected the sports business worldwide. I sincerely recommend this class to anyone interested in sports and the business around it.

3. Free Time

Cost of Living

As already mentioned in this report, the area around USC campus is considered a bit sketchy, and hence the majority of the students want to live on campus. This causes the housing costs to rise pretty high. All of us paid approximately $3800 for a shared room (2B4P). The rooms were pretty small and in satisfactory condition at best. I didn’t have any real problems with my roommates myself but some other exchange students were a little unluckier. The prices of the fore mentioned private apartments vary a lot according to the room and the condition (starting from around $1000 for shared room). But if you can afford these, you should definitely consider renting them.

Books for the classes are also very expensive. Luckily, I needed to buy only one book from Amazon but ended spending $130 on it. For my other courses I just needed to buy course readers from the University Bookstore which were relatively cheaper.

Otherwise, the living are cheaper in the US than they are here in Finland. Especially eating out is significantly cheaper and there are quite a lot of alternatives around the campus area (mainly fast food). Although the grocery stores are also low-priced, all of us ended up eating out on most of the days as it was so much easier. All the diners and cafeterias on campus are located in Tutor Campus Center. As can be expected, the restaurant selection in the whole LA area is massive and you can basically find flavors from any part of the world.

The first people that we got to know at school were the other exchange students. Besides the first orientation days, there were no evening activities organized by the school for us during the first days, so we had to figure something out by ourselves. Also the local people are generally speaking very outgoing and social people, which makes it easy to get to know them as well. The weather in LA is very pleasant throughout the year. In the beginning of the semester

temperatures were approximately 20 degrees Celsius during the day. As the summer gets closer the temperatures keep on rising, and at the end of the semester temperatures were always

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around 30 degrees. Rain seems to be pretty rare phenomenon in LA, and I guess there weren’t more than 10 days when it really rained during the spring.

Culturally LA is very diverse, as people from all over the world have moved to the city. The city is spread out in a huge area which makes the distances long. This combined with a poor public transportation makes it necessary to have a car for transportation. However, the renting rates are reasonably priced so it isn’t absolutely necessary to buy one. Uber and Lyft are very useful mobile apps to get around in the city, especially if you’re traveling with couple of friends.

Travelling

There are many areas to see in LA, such as Hollywood, Santa Monica and Beverly Hills. The beaches around the city are great, Manhattan Beach, Malibu and Venice Beach to name a few. Also Orange County should be worth checking out. There are also world-famous theme parks nearby (i.e. Disneyland and Universal Studios), which are pretty expensive but still great experiences. If you’re interested in sports then you should head to

Downtown to Staples Center, which is like 15 minutes away from USC. Also the Dodger Stadium isn’t that far away from the campus. Unfortunately the college football season is on only during the fall semester so we didn’t get a chance to see a USC game.

Using a car is also probably the best way to travel around California and the neighboring states. San Diego and San Francisco are both very nice cities and definitely worth visiting. Las Vegas is also within a driving distance and can be described as a must-see. We also spent one weekend in Mammoth, which is a big skiing resort in northern California. Grand Canyon was a bit further away in Arizona but the view from the top was breathtaking. One place which turned out to be a really positive surprise was Death Valley. Generally speaking the flights are pretty cheap if you just book them early enough. We travelled to Cabo San Lucas (Mexico) and Vancouver by plane. Also the trains and long-haul buses should be reasonably priced but none of us has that much experience of them.

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4. Final Comments

I would recommend USC to anyone who appreciates warm weather around the year, great beaches and sports; pretty much any day of the week you can go and see either the LA Lakers, Kings or Clippers play a few miles away from the university or the school’s own USC Trojans play. As for studies, I wouldn’t say it’s the most demanding school academically. It depends a lot on one’s course choices, but it’s easy to see which courses are demanding and which basically expect from you only to show up to get a grade. Everyone can make up their mind based on their preferences.

When going to USC, you have to keep in mind that the ’locals’ you meet are usually a lot younger than you, if you have gone through the ”standard” path to university in Finland. We were 22-23 years old but people taking the same classes were usually 20 year olds at most; some of them 18-19 years old. The difference is very notable especially in school events and parties.

Besides things learned in classes LA is the perfect place to learn small talk, which is very unfamiliar to someone from a Finnish culture. Everyone does it there, and if you don’t, they consider that you are just rude.

LA is the perfect place for the calm and laid-back way of life, people don’t stress too much, but it is very entrepreneurial minded at the same time.

University of Southern California