Is the University of Michigan or USC better for city life and an urban college experience?

USC offers the more urban day-to-day experience. Its campus sits within Los Angeles, so city life is part of the routine rather than something you travel out to find. You are dealing with a major metro area, city streets around campus, and easy access to neighborhoods, internships, events, restaurants, and public transit that feel unmistakably urban.

The biggest difference is the setting itself. USC is embedded in Los Angeles, near Downtown LA and connected to the broader city in a way that makes off-campus life feel immediate. Even when you are mostly staying near campus, the surroundings read as city living, and it is much easier to feel plugged into a large, active urban environment.

Michigan is in Ann Arbor, which is lively, walkable, and very college-centered, but it does not feel like living in a major city. Ann Arbor has great restaurants, shops, and plenty happening around campus, yet the atmosphere is much more that of a classic college town. You can have an active social life there, but the city itself is smaller-scale and more centered on the university.

Another practical difference is how often the city shows up in everyday student life. At USC, internships, cultural events, entertainment, and neighborhoods across LA are part of the school experience in a direct way, especially if you want your college years tied to a major metropolitan area. At Michigan, Detroit is the nearest big city, but it is not woven into daily campus life in the same way, since it takes a separate trip rather than feeling like an extension of campus.

For what you described, wanting to feel like you are actually living in a city while in college, USC matches that much more closely.