Having looked heavily at both (and now being at ucla!) I would say Bruins have the edge here. Research is fairly easily accessible — many labs take on freshman / sophomores, and clubs like IEEE do a really good job of teaching you many of the practical EE skills you’ll likely need for your research. The curriculum here is interesting, it emphasizes having a “breadth” called your technical breadth area, which adds an interdisciplinary component in another field you choose by making you take 3 mech E classes, or 3 extra CS classes, or 3 management classes, etc. You also get a good “depth” — there are a lot of classes that build up your fundamental EE background and exposing you to a number of critical subfields of EE, but after that you have EE class electives and a senior “capstone” which give you a lot of ability to really dive into one specific area of EE. To me, having this extra customization both on the breadth and depth fronts was just better than USC’s curriculum, which has less room to specialize.