If you receive the white box you are admitted to USC. Then you interview for the scholarship that is indicated in the packet.
If you are admitted and NMF with USC first choice, then Presidential Scholarship (and dibs on McCarthy). Not all NMF get in, btw. My D was NMF, but not admitted until March.
If you are an NMF with USC as first choice, can you potentially still receive a 1/4 scholarship tomorrow, and do these scholarships stack? I would assume not but am unsure. So if they donât stack, then the only way that NMFâs will be notified tomorrow is if they are in consideration for a full tuition scholarship?
This may be a dumb question/obvious answer, but if youâre applying and youâre not a NMF, but have great stats, ECs, do you still have a shot for any type of scholarship?
@Burrowsc my D was not a NMF but received the presidential scholarship
Deanâs (1/4) and Presidential (1/2) do not stack. Cadreamin and Wwward are the experts. My D has Trustee friends who were not NMF.
@Burrowsc Like @Marcie123 my son was not an NMF and received an invitation to interview for the Presidential scholarship at Marshall and received it. Another kid from his high school interviewed for the Presidential at Annenberg but was offered the Deanâs scholarship. That kid ended up at Northwestern which I think offered him full tuition. It all works out in the end!! Good luck to all the applicants!!
@Burrowsc as NMF, if you get acceptance to USC youâll automatically get half tuition. An NMF could get an invitation for the merit scholarship, but not all of them will get one. They make the decision for the interview not based on whether youâre NM semifinalist or not. I believe that many NMSF wonât get an interview for the scholarship.
my daughter was admitted to USC with the chance to interview for the Trustee. She was NOT NMF. She interviewed, and in fact, ended up with lower than the Deans scholarship. It all works out as USC was not a top choice for her and so, it was a no brainer after she got the few thousand dollar final amount (more like the booby prize!!). In my opinion, I do think that if one is offered an interview for the Trustee, they should at least default to the Deans (1/4). The only thing harmed was her ego for a few minutes! But, they say you can interview for the presidential and be bumped up or Trustee and go down----just not sure that far down is very cool on USCs part. There are many NMFs that do not even get into USC every year. I know plenty. I think first, USC is very aware of yield and high achievers (especially last year) and so there is a very good chance that they may go somewhere else (higher ranked school, etc), so they donât admit too many to begin with. Also, I donât think they want to have to pay the auto 1/2 tuition for NMF should they accept a very high number of NMF who then enroll. This is my observation from the last few years and I have paid attention to USC very closely.
My Dâs roommate was a NMF but did not interview for a scholarship.
NMF has nothing to do with this round of scholarship decisions. NMFs may find themselves being selected to get/interview for another scholarship this round, which is independent of them being an NMF. Some people get confused because if they are eventually named NMF and they select USC as #1 school with the NMSF by May 1st, they get the 1/2 tuition. Since they donât stack, if given the opportunity to interview for the Presidential this round (also half) they ask why they should bother interviewing since the 1/2 is a lock with NMF. But you interview at the chance of it getting bumped up, knowing it wouldnât matter if a Presidential got bumped down because you donât lose your NMF, that is guaranteed.
@hcmom65 You are certainly not alone, there are a couple kind posters on here whose students had the Trustee interview then dropped way down, but I thought Deanâs was the bottom of that drop. ugh, ya, that hurts for a bit for sure. Not sure I agree with that option either. But as you can probably attest, it all works out the way it is supposed to. A lot of scholarship recipients in the next few days will also happen to be NMFs. Itâs true that are many NMFâs not even admitted, there certainly isnât room for them all, they give about 150-200 NMF scholarships, so they do accept more of them than that, and they are one of the few top schools that actually gives something so big to NMFs, most schools that do give something arenât this high ranked, or itâs just a couple thousand bucks off. But it is just a single test criteria anyway and they have lots of parameters to factor in, thus spreading the scholarships around for various achievements.
@barbpz Northwestern doesnât give merit-based scholarships. If that kid got full tuition, it would have been all need based but in that case, what you described seems strange because he wouldnât have had the need for these merit-based ones at USC to begin with, unless USC doesnât have a policy to meet 100% of the demonstrated need.
@TrustProcess @Burrowsc and other newb posters - you may want to check out this first post on merit to catch you up on the process:
Per USC⊠MyUSC may be unavailable at times from 10pm on Saturday, January 26 until 2am on Sunday, January, 27 for scheduled maintenance. We apologize for the inconvenience.
That likely indicates prep for portal updates. And âwhite boxesâ being sent tomorrow, Thursday.
Yep thatâs a good sign. Good investigative work @WWWard! Still hoping they went out today to avoid third delivery day being a Sunday. ugh.
I donât think he qualified for need $ but not sure. Iâm only reporting what I was told about what he was offered at Northwestern but donât know it for a fact. I do know USC was not an option when he was bumped down to the Deanâs.
@WWWard and @CADREAMIN isnât it usually uploaded to the portal the 3rd night - letâs say delivered on Wednesday (today) - portal updated Friday night late (near midnight). So that if the portal is updated on Saturday night (as part of maintanence) then they would go out today - Wednesdsay - delivered Thursday (Day 1) and that would match up? OR
are we thinking portal update would be Sunday night, in which they would go out tomorrow Thursday and first delivery date Friday (day 1).
This.
But definitely hoping for the first case 
which portal would be updated? our applyto.usc.edu one, correct?