USC revokes slew of Ph.D. offers; cites federal funding, financial woes

Multiple USC doctoral programs are rescinding Ph.D. admission offers because of “uncertainty” in federal funding and the school’s ongoing financial woes, according to memos obtained by Morning, Trojan and university sources familiar with the matter.

Students who already accepted offers were unaffected; only applicants who haven’t accepted pending offers are subject to the revocations.

At least four Dornsife departments — chemistry, sociology, molecular biology, and religion — were ordered to rescind offers, but it was not immediately clear how many other programs or schools were affected.

A USC spokesperson did not answer questions about how widespread the cuts were, noting only that Ph.D. admissions are the purview of individual schools.

“Financial challenges across Dornsife and the university, combined with external research funding uncertainties, are putting significant strain on our budget,” Steven Finkel, Dornsife’s dean of graduate education, wrote in a Friday memo to the school’s department chairs and directors of graduate studies.

Ph.D. programs typically budget for a set number of students but extend more offers than that, knowing not all applicants will choose USC. In a normal year, it’s not a problem if a program inadvertently accepts a few too many students.

Now, though, the school will hold affected programs to a hard cap, forcing faculty to revoke outstanding offers once their seats fill. In interviews, multiple applicants described traveling to USC after receiving acceptance letters, then planning to attend the school — only to receive the unwelcome news.

Dornsife circulated two template letters for programs to send to affected applicants. The first offers the option to enroll in fall 2026 without reapplying, but notes that it’s unclear whether that cycle will face similar enrollment limits.

The second is an outright revocation that provides no such deferral option.

This was not entirely unexpected. In February, USC briefly paused Ph.D. admissions after the Trump administration slashed overhead funding that the National Institutes of Health traditionally bundles with research grants, STAT reported.

For weeks, other U.S. universities have paused, reduced, and rescinded graduate admissions in response to the NIH cuts.

Finkel’s memo to graduate school faculty notes that, “possibly due to other institutions cutting back on Ph.D. admissions,” Dornsife has seen a 15% increase in acceptances of doctoral offers compared to the same time last year.

An “unprecedented” number of programs have already filled their seats ahead of the school’s April 15 decision deadline, Finkel wrote.

In contrast to Finkel’s memo — which in part blamed USC’s financial woes that predated Donald Trump’s inauguration — the school’s external communications blame only federal funding for the revoked admissions.

The decisions were made “in light of uncertainty regarding federal research funding,” a USC spokesperson wrote. Dornsife’s template letters include similar verbiage.

The discrepancy underscored the increasingly blurred lines between USC’s recent barrage of budget cuts due to an arguably self-inflicted budget deficit, and those driven by White House policy.

On Wednesday, Provost Andrew Guzman told the Faculty Senate that if the university doesn’t receive a financial shock from the federal government, its operating deficit will vanish by the end of the next fiscal year, the Daily Trojan reported.

But, he said, it’s “overwhelmingly likely” that USC will lose hundreds of millions in federal funding thanks to Trump’s executive orders.

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