<p>Many (not all) students at USC’s Resident Honors Program, which takes 30 or 40 students after junior year of high school, make arrangements with their high schools so that their first year of college doubles as their senior year of high school, enabling them to graduate with their hs classes. In addition to offering merit $, RHP also allows its students to enter USC’s Thematic Option honors program, small muti-disciplinary seminars that substitute for almost all GE’s, offered to 200 entering students a year. There is a Dec. 1 application deadline for RHP and for USC merit scholarships, so students need to take SAT/ACT fairly early if they want to participate. Exhausting the resources of the high school is one rationale for attending, but some students are simply ready to make the transition to college early, perhaps wanting to study a particular area with more intensity and focus than what they could find in high school, study areas not taught in depth in their high schools, or participate in the arts in a way their secondary schools cannot facilitate.</p>