Faculty Recommendations

The following information and process is for the Continuing Student Scholarship application ONLY. For all other scholarships that require recommendations or references, please refer to that scholarship’s cover page for submission instructions.

A formal letter of recommendation is not necessary; faculty recommenders will simply complete a form on your behalf to recommend you for a continuing student scholarship.

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). 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.

To complete the scholarship recommendation process, you must:

• Communicate with the professor who will be recommending you.
  • Meet with the faculty member in person or communicate via email – whichever the faculty prefers.
  • Share information on the classes or activities that you have participated in, as well as your future academic and career plans.
  • You may want to provide a copy of your resume so that the professor knows more about your extracurricular involvement.
  • Be sure to tell the professor that you are applying for a USC Dornsife Continuing Student Scholarship, and that he or she should expect to receive an email containing a link to a Recommendation Form from USC Dornsife Admission and Student Success.
• You will submit your faculty recommender’s name, email address, and Dornsife department via a similar form. We will use this information to send the Recommendation Form to your recommender.

Who can serve as a faculty recommender?

• The professor must be 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).
•  Writing 150/340 instructors (Dornsife affiliated) or CORE 111/112 instructors are fine.

Who cannot serve as a faculty recommender?

• Teaching Assistants (TAs) and staff (including academic advisors) are not acceptable sources for recommendations.
• Faculty from another USC school (e.g. Marshall, Viterbi, Annenberg, etc.). The professor must be a USC Dornsife faculty member.

Important dates:

January 2026: We will post a link to the Dornsife Continuing Student Scholarship faculty recommender form on this webpage.

Wednesday, February 18: Deadline to submit to USC Dornsife Student Success the name and contact information of the faculty member who will be completing a recommendation for you.

Friday, March 13, 11:59pm Pacific Time: Deadline to submit the USC Dornsife Continuing Student Scholarship online application. We must also receive your faculty recommendation from your faculty member by this date. This is a strict deadline. Applications received after this date will not be reviewed.