<p>Does USC offer alot of Merit aid? What about for NMF's?</p>
<p>Yes, and 1/2 tuition (approx. 16,000) for National Merit finalists. A list of merit scholarships are on the USC website</p>
<p>Thanks BabyTrojan!</p>
<p>Additionally, individual schools can consider you for merit aid, above & beyond the 1/2 tuition NMFs can receive. For Engineering, the max is up to $2500 on top of 1/2 tuition. Trustee is the best merit aid, offering full tuition, but there aren't too many of them awarded, I believe.</p>
<p>^ I believe they offer trustee scholarships to about 200 applicants.</p>
<p>This link shows how many Trustee and Presidential Merit Scholarships were given out this past year.</p>
<p>2005 Entering Freshman Class
New Freshmen 2,741
USC Trustee Scholars (full-tuition) 110
USC Presidential Scholars (half-tuition) 258
USC Deans Scholars (quarter-tuition) 53
National Merit Scholars 194
National Hispanic Scholars 16
National Achievement Scholars 3</p>
<p>^ Those are the numbers of people who accepted their scholarships, not including people who received them and did not go to USC.</p>
<p>My NMF D, a spring 2007 admit, was not awarded one cent by USC for National Merit - a great disappointment to all of us. She also did not receive notification of admission until the end of the first week in April. Just don't understand this. She will not be attending USC.</p>
<p>Yup. USC's finaid is incomprehensible. reasonabledad went through the same situation as you did. I went through a similar, though not as disheartening, situation.</p>
<p>Good luck!</p>
<p>admissions and merit scholarships were tight this year. There are guys I know who I thought could win 1/4-tuition scholarships who were rejected completely.</p>
<p>If you are a NMF & WANT to go to USC, I'd contact the admissions counselor in your area right away. The website is here: <a href="http://www.usc.edu/admission/undergraduate/counselors/admission_counselor/%5B/url%5D">http://www.usc.edu/admission/undergraduate/counselors/admission_counselor/</a></p>
<p>According to everything we were told & receiving in writing from USC, all NMFs who are admitted & list USC as their 1st choice by the deadline will receive 1/2 tuition merit scholarship. If your child isn't interested in attending USC you can just ignore this post, of course. The folks at admissions have been very helpful & responsive every time I've contacted them.</p>
<p>Thanks, HImom. My dtr did finally receive notification on 4/26 that USC had granted her scholarship $$ after all - a $4000 Trojan Scholarship and a half-tuition Presidential Scholarship. We went to the fin aid website and learned that she was also given a $1000 NMF scholarship. However, she had already committed to - and is excited to go to - UCSD. Interestingly, the scholarships USC has granted brings down its cost to almost exactly the cost of a UC.</p>
<p>This is very interesting because we were just informed by mail that Trustee, Presidential, Leadership, Deans Directors, Associates & Trojan Scholarships are mutually exclusive. You can only receive ONE--the one with the greatest value.</p>
<p>In addition, you can only receive up to $2500 in scholarships from any other USC source in addition to ONE of the above awards. </p>
<p>Anyway, I'm glad your daughter has found a school she loves where I'm sure she'll be very happy & successful. I'm also glad she learned about the merit aid the school wanted to award her.</p>
<p>Yes, we received that information a while ago as well - which makes this even more of a mystery. I would have thought that the half-tuition would be labeled as a National Merit award - that was all we thought she might get. So I am still not sure how this happened, although it was curious that she received two separate letters informing her of Trojan and Presidential awards. Perhaps one of them was awarded in error and may later have been rescinded?</p>
<p>Thank you for the warm wishes. I wish your child the best as well.</p>
<p>Someone else whose kid got a Dean's Scholarship with 1/4 tuition & then a Leadership Scholarship with $10,000/year had to forfeit the lower value scholarship & just kept the higher value one. The kid & parents were happy with the increase.
I was told that the GC gets to nominate the student from your HS to be considered/selected for the Leadership Scholarship & it should be someone in student government. Basically, I've been told if the student get's a Presidential Scholarship, the MAX they can get in additional merit aid from USC is a $2500 merit scholarship. Outside scholarships can be kept, subject to the guidelines they also send you.</p>