what's most important for merit scholarships?

[Columbia_Student]

<p>

“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.”</p>

<p>And I’M sure that ONCE AGAIN, you are making assumptions, based NOT ON THE FACTS, but on your beliefs. We live in one of the " richest areas" yet have lived there all our lives, and I inherited the house we live in. Can you guess what our income is? And what we could afford to pay? No? I didn’t think so.

</p>

<p>Like I said in my post, it’s probably accurate for 90%. Marketing people do this all the time. Mini from the parent forums often mentioned this. I’m not the one that make it up. When I have some time, after my exercise, I will try to find the post.</p>

<p>

And based on this post:
"As for who does the scholarship interviews, It is two faculty members and a current Trustee/Presidential scholar. Then each school chooses their scholarship recipients - not the financial aid dept."
it becomes clear that the FA dept has NOTHING to do with deciding WHO is offered a Trustee scholarship. It also helps explain why some qualified students don’t make the cut, especially if there are more “qualified” students applying to a particular school- like Vertibi, than scholarships available to that particular school.

I did not respond to post #51 because I promised myself I won’t. The post has full errors and assumptions so I won’t even go there. But note, that it’s the adcom that selects who gets to be interviewed for Trustee scholarship. Please reread my post, I never said the Financial aid department chooses the recipient.</p>