what's most important for merit scholarships?

[Columbia_Student]

<p>

@menloparkmom

"Your son was admitted 4-5 years ago, things might be changing now. "
Hello?? I was referring to the CURRENT Trustee information , which is what I copied from the current USC website. The CURRENT information makes no mention of the need for FA regarding merit Scholarship consideration .</p>

<p>“If it did, then students would need to fill out FAFSA applications as well, in order to be considered, and to my knowledge that is not required.”
What part of this did you not understand?</p>

<p>“As for the trustee scholarship interview, who decides who gets to be invited for interview? I think it’s adcom. Then the faculty gets to do interview.” Well duh! But in the end it is probably not the faculty that makes the final cut down, since only 100 T scholarships are awarded, and over 200 are invited to interview, and sometimes those interviewed for the Presidential scholarship get awarded the Trustees[ like my son, whose SAT score was 2350] .</p>

<p>You seem to making assumptions based on conjecture and 2nd hand knowledge.

Of course FAFSA is not required for Merit aid that is why it can be misleading. I’m sure USC admission Officers are trained and sophisticated enough to know who can pay full pay and who cannot. Especially if they are the ones that going to make decision on who to award the trustee scholarships. Take for example, someone attend a high school from one of the richest area versus someone attend a high school from a rural area. Without reading the whole application, I would guess the one from the richest high school would tend to be more well off than the one from the rural area. Now it maynot be applicable to 100% of the case but for 90% of the case. And there are many other factors as well but I won’t go into that.</p>