Changing your password at least once a year
When I was an undergraduate at UCSB, I didn't remember being required to change my password at least once a year. However, at USC, I found out that students have to change their password at least once a year. Back in March, I received an email to change my password (the email stated that "university policy requires that you change your USC NetID password at least once every twelve months"). However, I didn't change my password on time and so I was temporarily locked out of websites that required logging in via my USC account, including Brightspace (which consists of course material for my classes, including homework, quizzes, and lecture slides). This led me to not be able to take a weekly quiz in person for one of the challenging but required classes for my master's program (called DSCI 553 (Foundations and Applications of Data Mining)) and so I ended up taking the makeup quiz for that week's quiz via a TA's (teaching assistant's) office hours.
False fire alarm issues in apartments (at least for some USC-owned apartments, particularly Troy East)
During my 2 years at USC, I lived in USC-owned apartments (those that were owned by USC Housing). While the apartment that I lived during my first year at USC had a few false fire alarms go off throughout the school year, false fire alarms were more frequent in the apartment that I lived in during my second year at USC (including one that happened around 5am during my final semester at USC). According to Reddit, it seems that other USC-owned apartments and apartments not USC-owned deal with false fire alarms. In a Reddit post response from user hotzero on a November 2023 post, fire alarms seemed to be an issue on all the on-campus dorms, and in another Reddit post response by user Alonsel to a June 2023 Reddit post, "at least 2 false alarms happen every week at like 12-2am" on average at University Gateway (an undergraduate apartment which is not owned by USC, though residents sign a USC housing contract). Fire alarms also seem to be a problem at The Lorenzo (which is privately owned) according to an October 2025 Reddit post, with one response from user flvrf mentioning "fire alarms have been a problem since the Lorenzo opened." Thus, these false fire alarms do seem to be an issue in multiple different apartment buildings, and this false fire alarm issue should be paid more attention to so that these alarms (including those after midnight) can be avoided in the future. It does seem that some apartments are not as susceptible to fire alarms, including the USC-owned McClintock Apartments, according to a Reddit response by the user ocbro99 to a February 2024 post that stated "practically no fire alarms from someone burning toast." However, McClintock Apartments is one of the undergraduate apartments part of USC Housing and so masters/graduate students like myself would not have been able to reside in McClintock Apartments.
Effectively handling challenging professors teaching difficult classes in my masters program
My program consists of several required classes to take, including the 2 most difficult classes: DSCI 551 (Foundations of Data Management) and DSCI 553 (Foundations and Applications of Data Mining). I took DSCI 551 during fall 2025 (which was my second to last semester at USC) and DSCI 553 during spring 2026 (which was my final semester at USC). Both classes were taught by professors with low ratings of less than 2 out of 5 stars on Rate My Professors. DSCI 551 had challenging exams, while DSCI 553 overall had difficult weekly quizzes where I often got low scores on (particularly during much of the beginning and middle of the semester) in addition to a challenging comprehensive exam. Homework assignments for these classes were challenging as well, though I did go to TA office hours in addition to asking others via text and a Discord server that I created for DSCI 553 to resolve any issues regarding homework, quizzes, and projects. For some of the other classes that I took for my program that weren't as challenging, I also made use of TA office hours to ask any questions (including homework and project questions). While both DSCI 551 and DSCI 553 had a project due after the last exam, I was able to do well on the projects for those classes. However, my final grades for both DSCI 551 and DSCI 553 weren't particularly well due to my exam scores for DSCI 551 and average weekly quiz scores and comprehensive exam score for DSCI 553 not being high enough despite doing well in the homework assignments and projects for both classes, though I did learn useful information from these classes. If I spent more time doing practice problems for DSCI 551 exams and especially for weekly DSCI 553 quizzes and the DSCI comprehensive exam by finding these problems online (such as finding weekly DSCI 553 quiz and comprehensive exam questions from previous semesters) on top of reviewing lecture notes for these exams and quizzes and reached out more to others taking data science masters courses regarding tips on doing well in DSCI 551 and DSCI 553, I think that it's possible that I would have done better in both classes. Additionally, reaching out more to others taking data science masters courses would allow me to have a better idea on what electives to take, what semesters they plan to take certain required courses, and potentially have people that I know who I can study with for those classes.
Late lecture times (particularly the time when lectures end) at USC
The latest time that a lecture can end at USC seems to be 9:50pm, such as in the case for the CTAN452 (Introduction to 3-D Computer Animation) class at USC. One lecture/lab section for this course is during Tuesdays 7pm-9:50pm, and another lecture/lab section is during Fridays 7pm-9:50pm for Fall 2026. When I took DSCI 553 during my final semester at USC, the course had weekly lectures scheduled to be more than 3 hours long on Wednesdays 6pm-9:20pm, with 9:20pm being later than the latest time that any of my lectures have ended at UCSB. However, there may be other classes at UCSB that I haven’t taken before that may end around 10pm according to UCSB's Course Schedule page. Fortunately, despite 9:20pm being the scheduled time for DSCI 553 lectures to end, lectures for that class typically finished well before this scheduled end time but were still around 2.5 hours long for the most part (with some shorter lecture days ending before 8pm), though the tradeoff for the lectures ending before the expected end times of 9:20pm for this class was that the lecture slides were often gone through fairly quickly.
Longer lecture lengths at USC compared to UCSB
Compared to lecture lengths for my classes at UCSB, lecture lengths for my classes at USC tend to be longer, specifically nearly 2 hours for classes meeting twice a week and over 3 hours for classes meeting once a week, though sometimes classes may end before the lecture end time. Meanwhile, the UCSB classes I took that had lectures twice a week had each lecture at 75 minutes (1.25 hours), while the lecture that met once a week lasted 2.5 hours (though that class often ended after around 2 hours or so). According to the Daily Nexus article "Class times and locations at UCSB are shaped by capacity, policy and demand" by Henry Ding, for Winter Quarter 2026, there were 159 classes with 170-minute lectures (just under 3 hours), 839 classes with 75-minute lectures (which was more than half of the total number of classes for Winter Quarter 2026), 232 classes with 110-minute lectures (nearly 2 hours and matching the length of USC lectures for my classes at USC that met twice a week), 175 classes with 50-minute lectures, and 130 classes with lecture lengths with a different lecture length that wasn't specified. The pie chart for the aforementioned information is shown below. Meanwhile, UCSB's Academic Scheduling of Classes and Classrooms PDF file mention 3 hour seminars. For me, UCSB and USC lectures often did breaks, with UCSB's breaks typically lasting around 5 minutes (for lectures that met twice a week) and USC's breaks typically lasting around 10 minutes, and lectures of longer lengths for both UCSB and USC may have lengthier and/or more frequent breaks.
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| Pie chart of undergraduate lecture durations at UCSB (also seen in the "Class times and locations at UCSB are shaped by capacity, policy and demand" Daily Nexus article) |
Final Thoughts
It's been great being able to attend USC as a masters student. I'm grateful for all the connections and experiences that I got to have for the 2 years that I was at USC, and if I were to relive my masters student experience at USC, I would definitely keep in mind about the things that I wished I knew before attending USC, including remembering to change my USC account password in addition to being prepared for fire alarms in USC-owned apartments, difficult courses with challenging professors, late lecture end times, and longer lecture lengths.
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