One thing that USC does an excellent job of is pampering its scholarship recipients. They get a nicely located dorm, and their “Thematic Option” (basically, honors but different) classes have hand-picked professors chosen to teach classes no larger than 20 or something.
In USC’s Viterbi School of Engineering, people who qualify for Merit Research get $50,000 attached to them that goes to whatever professor sponsors their research or lets them work in their lab. So if I get one, professors are very strongly incentivized to take me on, and there’s pretty much no worry about research availability.
UMD has programs with similar attitudes, though not with as much money thrown at them.
From your description, USC does seem to offer a lot for its scholarship recipients. Rochester offers much less. I was given the ‘top’ scholarship—a merit-based full scholarship, but there is not much else attached to it; no priority for housing or courses. Even the research grant that I was given is rather meager compared to USC’s - $3000 compared to $50000.
Interesting point.
One thing that USC does an excellent job of is pampering its scholarship recipients. They get a nicely located dorm, and their “Thematic Option” (basically, honors but different) classes have hand-picked professors chosen to teach classes no larger than 20 or something.
In USC’s Viterbi School of Engineering, people who qualify for Merit Research get $50,000 attached to them that goes to whatever professor sponsors their research or lets them work in their lab. So if I get one, professors are very strongly incentivized to take me on, and there’s pretty much no worry about research availability.
UMD has programs with similar attitudes, though not with as much money thrown at them.
From your description, USC does seem to offer a lot for its scholarship recipients. Rochester offers much less. I was given the ‘top’ scholarship—a merit-based full scholarship, but there is not much else attached to it; no priority for housing or courses. Even the research grant that I was given is rather meager compared to USC’s - $3000 compared to $50000.