World Bachelor in Business Program 2019

AggieMom68
Mon, 11 Mar 2019 16:39:49 +0000

@Quantjock reposting from last year. Thank you!
04-28-2018 at 11:13 pm edited April 2018
Hi, proud parent of a newly enrolled USC Marshall World Bachelor in Business (WBB) student here. I’m posting this as an FYI for any future WBB Presidential scholar early admits and their families. The merit scholarship process works slightly different for WBB (as we found out the hard way) and there isn’t any info posted on USC’s website about the specifics. Hopefully by posting here it will help smooth out some of the bumps we encountered this year for future WBB families. I’ll cross post this info to the Trustee/Presidential scholarships thread in case Google sends people there.

Most (not all) of the US WBB admits are notified of their acceptance in the early round with other Trustee and Presidential admits. In their admission letter in the “White Box”, WBB early admits are notified that they are invited to interview for a Presidential scholarship during one of the Explore USC scholarship events. One bad thing about the acceptance letter is that the actual WBB program acceptance itself is hard to find. It isn’t listed in the main section of the letter but is found as “additional information” at the very bottom of the second page under the Merit Scholarship Status section. Not seeing that right away led to many moments of wondering whether a WBB admit was out of the running.
The Explore USC visit, overnight stay and scholarship interview were exactly the same for the WBB kids as they were for other Presidential scholars.

From that point forward, things start working differently for WBB. Scholarship notifications for most USC Presidential and Trustee winners happened via portal the night before Regular Decision boxes were sent out by USC Admissions. That didn’t happen for WBB admits. Do not, I repeat DO NOT, wait up all night refreshing the portal. Or the next day, or the day after. It will never update. WBB scholarship decisions and notifications are run thru the Marshall admissions office, not the main USC scholarship/admissions office and they will not show up on the USC portal. This year, the WBB early scholarship decisions came via an email from the head of Marshall admissions, in the afternoon, 4 days after other scholarship results were posted on the portal. Those were four very long days and nights for us, waiting and wondering about the results of the scholarship interview. Knowing before hand that the portal would never update would have been nice to know.

Fortunately, all WBB students are awarded either a 1/2 tuition or a 1/4 tuition scholarship as part of their acceptance to the program. The WBB scholarships are joint awards from all 3 partner universities (USC, HKUST & Bocconi) and they transfer to each school as students travel to them. It’s welcome news for the US admits that the scholarships are applied to each school’s local tuition cost. For example, if tuition at Bocconi is 14,000 euro, the 1/2 tuition WBB students pay 7,000 euro the year they are in Italy plus room/board. After doing the math, this aspect of the WBB program made USC an extremely attractive option for us.

One downside that is unique to the WBB merit awards is that they are program specific and are not transferable to other majors at USC. If students leave the WBB program to transfer to Viterbi or into a different major in Marshall, they forfeit their scholarship.

WBB students must also maintain good academic standing which is spelled out in the acceptance letter as at least a 3.0 GPA in all Marshall business classes and at least a 3.0 GPA in all USC classes. Grades at the partner institutions must be maintained at an equivalent scale. With only 2 full years at USC, and less within Marshall itself, that leaves little room for a couple of weak grades. That is another downside and may be why the WBB program is so selective.

One last important item…we found out recently at admitted students day that the WBB scholarship award will not officially post to the USC financial aid portal until sometime this summer. It’s only after orientation when the WBB classes are scheduled, that the WBB scholarship notification is sent by Marshall to the financial aid office and applied to the portal. Until then, the only proof of scholarship is the emailed letter from Marshall. Hang tight and don’t stress too much about the big numbers on the financial aid portal, it will eventually be fixed.

I hope this is helpful for future adventuresome WBB admits, Fight On!