My daughter will be applying to USC. She will have no problem getting in and will go on a near free ride. She will be a national merit scholar finalist. But her #1 requirement on any school she goes to is to be in the Honors College. Can anyone tell me now hard it is to get into honors college at USC and what they are looking for (grades, test scores, etc are not an issue, but not a ton of extra curriculars). Also, if you get into the honors college are you guaranteed to get into honors dorm?? thanks!
Also - she is out of state if that makes any difference
My DS is a rising freshman at the South Carolina honors college. He got in with a higher than average test score and a lower than average GPA. He also did not have many extra curricular activities. We are local and know a lot of kids who got in. That being said I do know of a few that didn’t, so pay extra attention to the essays since I understand that they are very important for admission. As for dorms I do believe the honors dorm is guaranteed. DS just received his assignment yesterday. To be safe apply to USC as early as the app opens. Dorm assignment priority is based on this date. It will also give you plenty of time to write the essays for honors college. Good luck!
Getting into the Honor’s College is very competitive, but she should be able to get in with top scores and stats. I would not count on any type of full ride, even with the NMF status. The essays are weighed very heavily for the Top Scholars awards and there are very few near full rides for out of state students and it is super competitive. Both of my daughters were accepted into the honors college (oldest will be a senior and youngest turned down and will be attending Duke). Getting into the honor’s dorm is pretty much a given, but I know that my oldest daughter’s freshman class had a higher than anticipated yield and about 40 students were placed into other housing because of lack of space. Most were given the option to live on the Horseshoe in the apartments. Housing priority is based on application date. Also make sure not to chose a non honor’s student as a roommate, that can potentially create complications with getting into the honor’s dorm if the yield is higher than anticipated.
I would recommend reading through their scholarship awards in order to understand exactly what they award. My dd is an OOS McNair TS and NMF and she is not attending full-ride. Her brother attended Bama on a true full-ride where every single thing was covered by scholarships. With dd we still owe a few thousand plus books every yr. (From a btdt POV, it feels very different.)
Agree that essays matter. Our dd did not have a long list of ECs, but she did have some significant achievements like international level awards.When we attended TS weekend, they stated that test scores and GPA were not the deciding factors and that plenty of top scoring students including 36s were not invited to TS weekend. The group of kids at TS weekend were all kids with pretty amazing levels of accomplishments.
We also know a couple of great students who did not get accepted into the HC (not sure exactly why, but in hindsight they think they didn’t put enough effort into their essays), though most of the top kids we knew about did get accepted into the HC.
IIRC, the HC is about 500 students.
A NMF with close to 4.0 unweighted gpa should be able to get into Honors, but getting Horseshoe or McNair is very difficult. Don’t count on it. My kid got into Stanford but didn’t get Horseshoe or McNair.
@themcgees full ride?
Yes, my kid did not put that much effort into Honors essays because he did not find their questions all that interesting. However, he also did not possess top GPA or test scores, so didn’t think he would get it. Also, the CA rep quit her job the same year, and the school really did not seem all that motivated to bring in kids from CA. Got NMF merit and Coopers merit that year which was expected, as well as Honors and IB major. Would have made an official visit had he not gotten into Stanford early.
Does anyone know what the extra fee for honors students covers? I heard its $575 per semester additional.
@freebie73 The official answer is that the fee primarily helps defray the costs of offering almost 600 Honors courses per year. It also allows the Honors College to fund student research, internships, study abroad, service learning, and senior thesis research. My oldest is graduating in May from USC, as a Honor’s student and has nothing but positive experiences with the program. I will say that you also need to be mindful that specific departments will have additional fees as well. She is in the Darla Moore School of Business and that is an additional $678 per semester.