USC to add 5 scholarships in Fall 2013
USC will partner with the Stamps Family Charitable Foundation to increase the size of the Carolina Scholars program beginning in Fall 2013.
Five more in-state students will receive the $10,000-per-year scholarship, meaning the university will now award 25 of the scholarships each year. Each of the Stamps Scholars will be awarded an additional $8,000 as an “enrichment fund” for study abroad programs, internships and other experiential learning, according to a university press release.
The Stamps Foundation will fund half of the new scholarships, and other donors will match those gifts to round out the total.
USC will join 33 other universities that already partner with the Stamps Foundation, including the University of Chicago, Notre Dame and the University of Michigan.
Jan Smoak, the associate director of the Office of Fellowships and Scholar Programs, called the opportunity to join the Stamps program a “now or never proposition” in an email to current Carolina Scholars and likened the university’s application to competing for a national scholarship.
“They wanted to add some additional schools, but they weren’t going to be adding schools forever,” said Novella Beskid, OFSP’s director.
USC is the only school from South Carolina and the fourth Southeastern Conference school to partner with the foundation, along with Georgia, Louisiana State University and the University of Mississippi.
The Stamps Foundation was founded by Penny and E. Roe Stamps at their alma maters, Georgia Tech and Michigan.
This year, only 120 students in the country were accepted as Stamps Scholars out of the 160,000 who applied.
USC will nominate 10 students as Stamps Scholars each year, and those students will interview with Roe Stamps, a venture capitalist from Florida.
Adding the new scholarships could have a measurable impact on USC’s average SAT scores, according to Provost Michael Amiridis.
In an incoming class of 4,600, adding another 20 Carolina or McNair Scholars would increase the university’s average SAT score by one point, according to Amiridis, so the new addition could boost USC’s numbers by about a quarter of a point.
“It may not sound like much, but if you think about it in terms of only 20 students raising the overall average of 4,600 by 1 points, it is significant,” Amiridis wrote in an email response.
The Carolina Scholars program was founded in 1969 to encourage in-state students to stay in South Carolina. With private support, it has since grown from nine students in 1969 to a group of more than 80 this year.
In addition to the $10,000 scholarship, Carolina Scholars are automatically admitted into the South Carolina Honors College and given a new laptop, preferred freshman housing and parking privileges.
“It is certainly a recruiting tool,” Beskid said. “It’s to provide our very best in the state with the very best undergraduate education that I think, arguably, they could get anywhere in the country.”
The Office of Fellowships and Scholar Programs will serve as a “home base” for the students to help them connect with campus resources, Beskid said.
“We don’t just give our top students the scholarship check. They are provided an enhanced university experience over four years, so it really supports them to reach all their personal, academic and co-curricular goals,” she said. “The Stamps Foundation and these new scholarships and their enrichment funds will just help make that happen for more students over four years.”
The Carolina and McNair Scholar finalist awards will also be renamed “to better reflect the idea that these scholars indeed have been gifted with an excellent scholarship,” Smoak said in her email to Carolina Scholars.
Carolina Scholar finalists will now be called Hamilton Scholars, and McNair Scholar finalists will be Horseshoe Scholars, the email said.
“The name ‘Carolina Scholar finalists’ leads you to believe they were first runner up or didn’t even get the scholarship, when in actuality it’s another very prestigious top scholarship in the university, and it has a very nice package that goes with it,” Beskid said. “So by changing the name, I think it gives the distinction to these scholarships that they truly deserve and that these students truly deserve.”
Editor’s note: News Editor Thad Moore contributed reporting.