USC predates the railroad connection that would transform Los Angeles from a small town into a major city. When the Southern Pacific reached Los Angeles in 1876 and the Santa Fe in 1885, the city's population exploded — but USC was already there, already teaching, already committed to becoming something significant in a place that had not yet decided what it was going to be.

The founding in 1880 makes USC the oldest private research university in California, a distinction it holds over institutions that would later outrank it in various measures. The campus that was established in what is now called University Park, south of downtown, has expanded dramatically from its original footprint while maintaining its position as one of the anchors of the neighborhood — a relationship between an institution and its surroundings that has been complicated and contested at various points across 140 years.

The USC School of Cinematic Arts is the oldest and, by most measures, the most influential film school in the world. Its alumni include George Lucas, Ron Howard, Robert Zemeckis, and John Carpenter — directors who between them shaped the blockbuster era of American cinema. The school has been a pipeline between education and industry in a way that reflects its geographic proximity to the studios and its deep institutional relationships with them.

In 2006, George Lucas donated $175 million to the School of Cinematic Arts, the largest gift in the school's history. The donation funded a new campus for the school and reflected Lucas's conviction that film education requires resources commensurate with the industry it serves. The resulting facilities — designed to house both traditional filmmaking education and the digital production tools that have transformed the industry — set a standard that other film programs have aspired to match.

USC's academic profile extends well beyond its famous alumni in the entertainment industry. The university's medical school and hospital complex — Keck Medicine of USC — anchors a health sciences enterprise that serves one of the most medically complex urban populations in the country. Its research programs span the physical and biological sciences, engineering, social science, and the humanities.

George Olah, a professor in USC's chemistry department, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1994 for his work on carbocations — a fundamental contribution to organic chemistry with applications in fuel processing and pharmaceutical synthesis. Olah's career at USC exemplified the research university's core function: pursuing knowledge whose applications cannot always be predicted, conducted by people given the institutional support to follow their questions wherever they lead.

USC's athletic program has accumulated 107 NCAA team championships — more than any other program in the country by some measures — and its Olympic record is extraordinary. More than 512 USC Olympians have combined for 326 medals across the modern games, a number that reflects both the university's scale and its geographic situation in Southern California, where weather and facilities support year-round training in virtually every Olympic sport.

The Trojans have won national championships in football, baseball, swimming, tennis, water polo, beach volleyball, and track and field, among others. The football program's legacy is particularly deep — sixteen national championships, seven Heisman Trophy winners — though it has occupied a more complicated space in recent decades as the program has navigated the same pressures that confront college athletics broadly. The athletic success and the academic research enterprise exist in the same institution, connected by the Trojan identity that the university markets to alumni and the city alike.