USC Merit Scholarships 2026 - Full-Tuition Trojan Awards

USC merit awards range from a few thousand dollars a year up to full tuition. The Trustee Scholarship covers full tuition, about $75,384 a year at the 2026-27 rate. The Presidential covers half tuition, roughly $37,692 a year, and the Deans covers a quarter, roughly $18,846 a year. Associates, Directors and Leadership awards fall below those, commonly in the $10,000 to $20,000 a year band. The Mork Family and Stamps Leadership scholarships pay full tuition plus a $5,000 annual living stipend. None of the tiers covers housing, food or mandatory fees, which run about $24,574 a year on top.

For students entering in Fall 2027, the deadline is 1 November 2026, the Early Action and Early Decision date. Applicants to architecture, art and design, cinematic arts, dance, dramatic arts and music apply by 1 December 2026 and remain eligible because their departmental portfolios and auditions run on that calendar. The 10 January 2027 Regular Decision deadline for all other majors is admission-only. Apply then and you can still be admitted to USC, but you will not be read for a merit scholarship.

No. There is no scholarship form, no extra essay, and no nomination step. Every first-year applicant whose file is complete by the merit deadline is considered automatically. USC also confirms that you do not need to submit a need-based financial aid application to be considered for a merit scholarship from the Office of Admission, so the FAFSA and CSS Profile matter only if you want need-based aid on top of any merit award.

USC publishes no scholarship GPA cutoff, and the read is holistic rather than formulaic. In practice the entering class averages close to a 3.9 unweighted GPA with a demanding course load, and scholarship finalists sit at the top of that pool. Around 1,000 finalists are invited to interview each year from tens of thousands of applicants who file by the scholarship deadline, so a near-perfect transcript is the working floor for the Trustee and Presidential tiers. Leadership, service and talent then decide who moves from finalist to award.

USC awards roughly 100 Trustee Scholarships and 200 Presidential Scholarships each year, plus around 10 Mork Family Scholarships. Counting every tier, over 1,000 admitted students earned scholarships of $10,000 a year or more in the most recent cycle, and about 19 per cent of the 2024 entering class received some merit-based aid. USC put roughly $85 million into non-need-based scholarships in 2023-24.

Yes. USC merit scholarships from the Office of Admission are open to international first-year applicants on the same terms as domestic students, and citizenship is not a filter. That matters because USC does not offer need-based aid to international undergraduates, so merit is the main institutional funding route for them. International applicants who file the required financial statement slightly after the deadline through the applicant portal are not penalised in scholarship consideration.

Merit awards renew for eight semesters, or ten if you are in the five-year Bachelor of Architecture. To keep yours you must stay in good academic standing, finish at least 30 units each academic year and avoid conduct or academic integrity findings. Fall short and you go on scholarship probation with a 16-unit minimum per semester. You cannot hold two USC admission merit awards together: they are mutually exclusive, so if you are offered more than one you receive only the largest.

USC pays $20,000 a year to admitted students who are named National Merit Finalists and who list USC as their first-choice institution with the National Merit Scholarship Corporation. USC cut this award in December 2024 from half tuition, then worth about $34,952, down to the flat $20,000 it pays today, part of a wider trim to merit aid funding the university tied to its budget deficit. Guides still quoting the half-tuition figure are describing a cycle that has closed.