USC/Thornton prioritizes grad students with their music merit scholarships. We know of several grad students who have received partial or full music scholarships.
For undergrad, music scholarships are uncommon and I have not heard of large awards. (Does not mean they don’t exist, though) In 2020, my undergrad performance applicant was awarded $5K per year from Thornton. He had half to full tuition awards at other high level programs and attended elsewhere.
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I’m surprised that we haven’t heard from more EA admits. For those who were offered interviews, can you share what the format is? Do you have the option for either in person or virtual?
My twins weren’t offered interviews or merit so can’t help. We are staying excited about the early acceptance (but also: gosh that really would have been helpful to have at least one of them getting some merit consideration.)
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Congratulations on having two admitted! Do they want to go to college together?
My daughter received an interview! So happy!
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When do RD decisions for USC usually come out? 
@lkg4answers – thanks! they were super excited. And actually NO – they created their lists apart from each other. They are super close, but want such different things that they didn’t want to influence each other. One is pursuing linguistics and gender studies, and one is pursuing aerospace engineering. USC is the only school that they both applied to. Also, one of their sisters is now a freshman at USC (in Marshall), so if they both choose USC, we’ll have 3 there, in 3 different schools (Marshall, Viterbi, Dornsife). :).
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Wow, hope they give a discount for 3 students in the same family attending. Ha, ha!
Last year it was March 22 around 3 pm.
Scholarships unless need based are not tied to financial aid.
Just an FYI for this year’s accepted students (and future applicants)…In addition to reducing the monetary award for the national merit scholarship, USC no longer offers priority consideration for the Honors dorm (McCarthy) to recipients of the national merit scholarship. Highest priority is given to recipients of the Trustee (full tuition) and Presidential (half tuition) scholarships, as well as Stamps and Mork Family scholars. The housing department confirmed this, and said Deans, Leadership, Directors, and Associate scholarship recipients receive lower tier priority for the Honors housing. They did not have national merit scholarship recipients on the priority list for honors housing. We were surprised by this, but the admissions office confirmed that national merit scholarship recipients (despite receiving a higher financial award than several of these other scholarships) do not get to apply to live in the honors dorm. A pretty big disappointment for my child who really wanted at least a chance to apply to live in that honors community.
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I was wondering about this. Thanks for looking into it and letting us all know. My daughter was deferred, but I can imagine it’s very disappointing for those who have been accepted.
Do they still have the Mork Family Scholarship? I thought they stopped it several years ago.
I’m not sure what you mean by priority consideration. Priority has always gone to Trustee >Presidential>Deans. Even before EA, students who received merit awards applied for housing before the rest of the entering class was admitted. In the past, NMS who did not receive an early acceptance, applied for housing at the same time everyone else did.
Housing likely doesn’t have NMS listed because NMS has never been listed. NMS students have always been called Presidential scholars. My guess is that whomever you spoke to in housing (in early February) doesn’t know about the change in how the scholarships will be titled for the 2025-26 entering class.
Approximate number of scholarships by category:
- Trustee - 100
- Presidential - 200
- Associates - 10
- Stamps - 5 - 10
- Deans/Directors/NMS varies
McCarthy Honors College has room for over 500 students. @CADREAMIN would know better than me, but I don’t think they give out 180 Deans and Directors scholarships.
Illium Honors College (sophomores) has room for approximately 350 students. Many students choose to move into apartments, Greek homes, etc. their sophomore year so there isn’t as much demand.
An update to my earlier post re McCarthy housing:
I spoke with a higher up in the admissions office who assured me that USC national merit finalist scholarship recipients WILL have the chance to apply to live in the honors dorm (McCarthy) even if they do not receive a trustee or presidential scholarship.
With all the changes USC made to merit scholarships this year, they had not yet updated their housing website and not all of their admissions/housing office staff had the correct information about this. But they are working on updating everything/everyone now.
Of course, no one is guaranteed any housing assignment, but it’s nice to know this is still a perk of the national merit scholarship they offer.
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Anyone know anything about this new cardinal and gold scholar which is eligible for the honors college housing?
There was a previous post about someone getting it with $8,000 scholarship. I believe the student was selected without any additional application. I don’t believe there is any honors housing.
Should I put down a $60 housing deposit if my daughter received an interview for the trustee/presidential merit scholarship?
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We did and, prior to Explore USC, my student was pretty sure they were NOT going to attend USC.
In reality, even if she waits, she should be able to get into McCarthy if that is her first choice. Of course, it isn’t guaranteed. As was mentioned above priority for McCarthy housing goes to Trustee Scholars before Presidential Scholars before other merit scholars.
Just curious why everyone is so worried about getting McCarthy housing? I mean, all of the dorms at USC are good and all of the kids are smart and great students, so you really can’t go wrong… If your kid wants that dorm and they get it, fine, but they will have a great experience at USC regardless of the dorm!
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Interesting to see, how many of the NMF were deferred as opposed to EA, for fall 2025
The notion, at least a few years back was USC gave a preference to NMF.