Frequently Asked Questions

Yes, you may apply for a USC Dornsife Continuing Student Scholarship. Please indicate in your application that Spring 2025 is your first semester of attendance at USC, and type “N/A” when asked for your USC cumulative GPA.

Scholarship notifications will be made in June. If you are selected for a scholarship award, we must verify that you have a minimum 3.0 USC cumulative GPA at the end of the Spring 2025 semester before awarding you a scholarship. You will then need to maintain a minimum 3.0 USC cumulative GPA for the 2025-2026 academic year to continue to receive the scholarship.

Yes, you may apply for a USC Dornsife Continuing Student Scholarship.

Yes, you may apply for a USC Dornsife Continuing Student Scholarship as many of the awards are merit-based and not need-based. If you would like to let the scholarship committee know about current or future financial hardship (whether or not you currently receive need-based financial aid from USC), please use the “Optional Essay” section in the scholarship application to elaborate.

Unless otherwise stated, USC Dornsife Continuing Student Scholarships are one-time awards. Receiving (or not receiving) a scholarship a previous year has no bearing on whether or not you will receive a scholarship for the upcoming year.

USC Dornsife Continuing Student Scholarships may only be used toward university tuition costs. They will not cover housing, books, fees, or meal plans.

If you are a Trustee Scholar planning to study abroad, you may apply for a Gold Family Scholarship to help cover the cost of your study abroad program. Please see the Other Scholarship Applications page for more information.

Please use the “Optional Essay” box to share with us any information that you feel would be useful for the scholarship committee to keep in mind as your application is being reviewed. This includes information about your financial situation, as well as any other information that was not addressed elsewhere in your application. Be sure to adhere to the character limit, as the application will cut off your essay when the character limit has been exceeded.

If you would like to apply for a scholarship which lists an additional essay prompt, please use the final essay box on the application labeled “Additional Essay”. Select the scholarship to which you would like to apply and write an essay addressing the special prompt for that particular scholarship. The additional prompts are listed on the Scholarship Descriptions page. Be sure to adhere to the character limit, as the application will cut off your essay when the character limit has been exceeded.

To apply for another scholarship that requires an additional essay, click on the “+” sign in the bottom right corner below the last essay box. You may write up to three supplemental essays.

Yes, even if you submit one or more supplemental essays, you must still submit the personal statement essays.  We want to be able to consider your application for all possible scholarships, not only the handful of scholarships which require financial need or the submission of an additional essay.

While you may certainly write about the same topic, we highly recommend that you modify your personal statement, as the personal statement prompt has changed. You can include new or updated information, describe how your experience or life story has changed in the last year, or take the opportunity to refine your writing.

Log in to myUSC, click on OASIS, then “Unofficial Transcript.” If you are using a Safari or Google Chrome browser, select “Print,” then “Save As PDF.”  Save the document with the file name in the format “LASTNAME_FIRSTNAME_COURSES” and attach it to your online application. Alternatively, you may copy and paste all of the information from your Completed Course Summary to a Microsoft Word document, click “Save As,” and select “PDF (*.pdf)” in the “Save as type” drop down beneath the file name. We would prefer the file to be saved in a PDF format, but we will accept the file in a Microsoft Word format if you are unable to save it as a PDF file. You may also be able to access your Unofficial Transcript on Advise USC. Please do NOT submit a copy of your Official Transcript, which requires a fee.

If a financial aid summary is available, we would like you to submit the version that looks like this or like this. Log in to your myUSC account and click on “Financial Aid,” then “FAST (Financial Aid Summary and Tasks).” Select Academic Year 2024-25, then click on the tab for Financial Aid Summary. View the entire year summary, then click “print” on the top right side of the page. Repeat the “Save As” steps above to save your Financial Aid Summary as a PDF document, saving the document with the file name in the format “LASTNAME_FIRSTNAME_FINANCIALAID”. We would prefer the file to be saved in a PDF format, but we will accept the file in a Microsoft Word format if you are unable to save it as a PDF file. We are looking for your current year financial aid summary, as your financial aid summary for the upcoming academic year is not yet available.

If you do not receive financial aid from USC in the form of grants, scholarships, loans, or work-study, OR if you only receive merit-based scholarships, you will not be able to download a Financial Aid Summary. However, you will not be able to submit the Continuing Student Scholarship application if you do not upload a document to the Financial Aid Summary tab. If you do not receive financial aid from USC, please type “I do not receive financial aid from USC” into a Microsoft Word document, click “Save As,” and select “PDF (*.pdf)” in the “Save as type” drop down beneath the file name. We would prefer the file to be saved in a PDF format, but we will accept the file in a Microsoft Word format if you are unable to save it as a PDF file. Upload this file to your application with the file name in the following format: LASTNAME_FIRSTNAME_FINANCIALAID.

If you only receive merit-based scholarships (no need-based grants, loans, or work-study funds), please type a list of the scholarships (both USC scholarships and outside scholarships) you received for the 2024-25 academic year, including scholarship names and amounts received, into a Microsoft Word document. Click “Save As,” and select “PDF (*.pdf)” in the “Save as type” drop down beneath the file name. We would prefer the file to be saved in a PDF format, but we will accept the file in a Microsoft Word format if you are unable to save it as a PDF file. Upload this file to your application with the file name in the following format: LASTNAME_FIRSTNAME_FINANCIALAID. We are looking for your current year scholarships, as information for the upcoming academic year may not yet be available.

Feel free to use a resume that you may have used for other types of awards or academic purposes. If using a job resume, be sure to add some information about your extracurricular activities, volunteer experiences, and academic achievements (if you haven’t already done so). Your resume should present a clear picture of your general involvements in college so far. If you are a freshman, we understand that you haven’t spent much time in college yet, so feel free to include information about your involvement and academic achievements in high school. A helpful guide to resume writing published by the USC Career Center can be found here.

Here are some troubleshooting tips if you are unable to submit your application:

• Check to be sure that you have filled in all required fields on the online application.
• Verify that you have uploaded all three documents (unofficial transcript, financial aid summary, and resume) to your application and that all files are named in the specified format. Underscores must be included, and periods and spaces cannot be used:
  • Your unofficial transcript should be named LASTNAME_FIRSTNAME_TRANSCRIPT
  • Your financial aid summary should be named LASTNAME_FIRSTNAME_FINANCIALAID
  • Your resume should be named LASTNAME_FIRSTNAME_RESUME
• Try using a different browser.

If you are still unable to submit your scholarship application, contact us at scholarships@dornsife.usc.edu and provide the name of the browser you are using and the browser version number.

To apply for another scholarship that requires an additional essay, click on the “+” sign in the bottom right corner below the last essay box. You will be able to select a second scholarship name and write a second additional essay. You can submit up to three supplemental essays.

No, once you have submitted your scholarship application, you are unable to resubmit it. If you have edits, you can email them to scholarships@dornsife.usc.edu, and we can add the edits to your application file.

The Dornsife Faculty Recommendation Form assists in streamlining the process of requesting, writing, and evaluating scholarship recommendations. We ask that you first meet with the professor recommending you for a USC Dornsife Continuing Student Scholarship, either in person or via email, whichever the faculty member prefers. After that, complete the Dornsife Faculty Recommendation Request Form. Our office will send your faculty recommender a link to the Dornsife Faculty Recommendation Form which he or she can use to complete a recommendation for you. Please click here for more details on the process of requesting a faculty recommendation.

Your recommendation must come from a USC Dornsife faculty member who can speak to your abilities in an academic setting (e.g., someone who has taught you in a class or supervised your research). Teaching Assistants (TAs) and staff (including academic advisors) are not eligible to write recommendations. Faculty members must be USC Dornsife professors and not professors or instructors from another USC school (e.g. Marshall, Viterbi, Annenberg, etc.). Writing 150/340 instructors or CORE 111/112 instructors are fine. If you have two majors, one within USC Dornsife and one outside USC Dornsife, your faculty recommendation must still be written by a USC Dornsife faculty member.

We will send you an email once we have received and processed your faculty recommendation. Please allow 3-5 business days for your faculty recommendation to be processed after it is submitted. If you have not received an email from us, please feel free to email our office (scholarships@dornsife.usc.edu) to check on the status of your faculty recommendation. You may also want to check in with your faculty recommender to see if he or she has sent in your recommendation.

Yes, we will accept a letter of recommendation.  Once you submit the Dornsife Faculty Recommendation Form, we will include instructions for your faculty recommender on submitting a letter of recommendation if your recommender would prefer to submit one.