Oh, belated joy. I completely missed the reply from USC Annenberg in my daily barrage of emails, and received some potentially good news:
1) I don’t have to take TOEFL, but may need to take a test once my admission is confirmed.
2) As for GRE, they only look at verbal and quantitative scores, which must add up to a total of 1000. My scores total 1290. Whoopee.
3) They’re fine with both academic and professional referrals. And as yours truly wasn’t exactly a shining star at the Faculty of Law, the only academic on my list is my personal tutor, Prof John Parkinson. The sweetie 🙂 The other two referrals will be professional ones.