Faculty Recommendations

The Dornsife Faculty Recommendation Form assists in streamlining the process of requesting, writing, and evaluating scholarship recommendations for students, professors, and the scholarship committees. A formal letter of recommendation is not necessary; faculty recommenders will simply complete a form on your behalf to recommend you for a 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). 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.

To complete the scholarship recommendation process, you must:

• Communicate with the professor who will be recommending you for a USC Dornsife Continuing Student Scholarship. 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 the Dornsife Faculty Recommendation Form from USC Dornsife Admission and Student Success.
• Use our Dornsife Faculty Recommendation Request Form to notify Dornsife Admission and Student Success of your recommender. You will need your faculty recommender’s name, email address, and Dornsife department to complete the form. The form for the 2025-2026 Dornsife Continuing Student Scholarship award cycle will be posted here in January 2025.

After submitting your request, we will contact your professor with instructions on completing the Dornsife Faculty Recommendation Form.

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

Important dates:

The deadline to apply for a 2024-2025 Dornsife Continuing Student Scholarship has passed. Please visit this website in January 2025 for the application for the 2025-2026 Dornsife Continuing Student Scholarships.