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.

Recommendations must come from USC Dornsife faculty members. 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:

• Make an appointment to meet with the professor who will be recommending you for a USC Dornsife Continuing Student Scholarship. The meeting does not have to be long or formal – a brief chat with the professor during his or her office hours is fine. Discuss the classes or activities that you have participated in with the professor and share 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. Check back in January 2024 for the link to the form for the 2024-2025 Dornsife Continuing Student Scholarship application process. You will need your faculty recommender’s name, email address, and Dornsife department to complete the form.

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

Who can serve as a faculty recommender?

• The professor must be a USC Dornsife faculty member.
• Teaching Assistants (TAs) and staff (including academic advisors) are not acceptable sources for recommendations. The professor should be the primary instructor for a course you are taking or have completed.
• The professor must be a USC Dornsife faculty member and not from another USC school (e.g. Marshall, Viterbi, Annenberg, etc.).

Important dates:

Wednesday, February 14: Deadline to submit the Dornsife Faculty Recommendation Request Form to USC Dornsife Student Success. Please be sure to submit the request form by this date in order to give your faculty recommender ample time to complete a thoughtful recommendation for you.