Since USC is a "small" school, you really have the opportunity to connect with your professors. At a big school like UCLA, you are just one of tens of thousands of undergrads, and it is much more difficult to stand out. For example, lecture sizes for general education classes at USC rarely exceed 100, while at UCLA, most have about 300 kids in them! At USC, you never have to wonder about if you are going to have a seat in class, or if your professor knows who you are. Once you get into your major classes, the average class ratio is like 15:1, student to professor, and when your professor is able to know you and your work, this has obvious advantages.
But don't think that getting into USC is easy! The average GPA of high school coming into USC is about a 4.2, so you have to be the best of the best to get in here. USC does not accept mediocrity!
Also, USC is a private school, which has many advantages of its own. For one, classes are guaranteed; you never have to stress about not getting into a class that you need to graduate. This cannot be said of any of the UC schools, as their classes are often threatened by over-enrollment and state budget cuts. That's also something that you should consider in applying to college.
USC offers a variety of unique classes, like one I am in right now called Cinema Symposium. In this class, we screen movies before they debut (this term we saw "Drive", "The Descendants", "Tintin", "Hugo", and "Like Crazy" before they came out), and then we have a Q&A session with an actor, or a member of the production staff. Another popular class is called the LA Experience, where the class goes on trips throughout LA to experience things that the city is iconic for. These are just two of dozens of classes that USC offers that provide unique experiences.
As far as required classes go, the courses here are by no means easy! You really have to work hard for an A, as most professors feel that if you knew how to do the work already, you wouldn't be in college. This is especially true in my school, the Annenberg school for Journalism. All of my professors are Emmy Award-winning reporters or producers, so I am getting a top-notch education from people who have actually worked in the field. Furthermore, USC uses technology in the classroom that each respective industry uses every day. For example, the editing software we use to make our news packages is the same software that ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN use. And, they teach us everything today that will help us get hired tomorrow. Many employers have said that this gives SC kids an advantage over others, because we already know how to use things and they don't have to train us as much. As a matter of fact, when job fairs are held in LA, the UCLA kids get mad because the Trojans get way more jobs than they, the Bruins.
So basically, if you want to live and work in LA, you absolutely should go to USC.