<p>Does USC offer any sort of automatic merit aid just by you submitting your application? If so, how much? If it's not automatically awarded, how do you receive merit aid?</p>
<p>What fantasy world do you live in?</p>
<p>Will you be a National Merit Finalist? If so, and you are ADMITTED to USC (this is the hardest btw), then you will receive the USC NMF Presidential Scholarship (half tuition) — as long as they are doing things the way they have in the past. USC has granted this scholarship to all NMF accepted students in prior admit cycles. </p>
<p>IF you are a NMScholar ,admitted to SC…and enroll you will also receive the National Merit Foundation Scholarship of $1000 per year. To keep the scholarships a student must made an acceptable GPA and take the standard number of courses per year.</p>
<p>Some of the schools such as Marshall, Viterbi and Annenberg MAY add smaller scholarships to the National Merit Scholarship awarded to admitted students.</p>
<p>I suggest searching out local scholarship sources such as civic, patriotic, religious, Greek, business and others. Apply. In our local area one group only had six applicants for a $1500. scholarship. No essay was required. Yes, it takes time, but many scholarships are more substantial.</p>
<p>Op,
If you submit your application before 12/1/14, then they will evaluate your application to see if it is worthy of merit aid. You must have extremely high stats to be considered for their merit awards such as Presidential award etc. List of merit awards available are on the USC website under merit scholarships.</p>
<p>I think to get one or both of the NMF scholarships you have to put down USC as first choice on the semi-finalist paperwork. </p>