<p>bmanbs2 isn’t completely correct - you can still receive a presidential if you were nominated for trustee.</p>
<p>I’m a trustee scholar, I was nominated for presidential. It’s merit based, but not just by stats because I was nominated over my friends with better sats and higher gpas than me.</p>
<p>You fly in in late february/early march to interview for the scholarships, and they can either bump you up or bump you down.</p>
<p>I heard each school in usc gets a certain amount of scholarships to hand out, so it might be by school. I might be wrong though. they do separate you by schools at exploreusc (the interview program), though.</p>
<p>My stats: 2180 SAT, 3.5UW GPA from an extremely competitive h.s. in NYC. Majoring in Architecture so I also had a portfolio to show.</p>