Matching Dollar Scholarship Program

• Complete the online Scholarship Transmittal Form by January 1, 2010.
• Encourage students to check out our scholarship page.
• General information on financial aid at the UW can be found on the Student Office of Financial Aid's Web site.
• Matching Dollar Scholarship FAQs (PDF)
• Download the Scholarship Application Template (Word document)
• Badger Student Sendoff Invitation Request Form
• Matching Dollar Scholarship Award Certificate
• Scholarship Press Release Template

You can attract applicants through a general mailing to incoming or current UW students, by working with high school guidance counselors, or through newspaper ads and articles.

Provide admissions brochures to high school students and their guidance counselors. At the beginning of each year, we suggest that you contact UW Office of Admissions for the latest handouts.

You can also send application forms directly to the admitted students in your area. Each year, all chapters receive a list of continuing and accepted students from WAA by April 1. For enrolled students, WAA can pull a list of students after May 1, (or that year’s deposit deadline) who have paid their $50 deposit. You should also distribute applications to high schools and let guidance counselors know about the opportunity. If you share the list of incoming students with the guidance counselor, he or she can encourage them to complete the application. It can be an effective way to identify the most deserving applicants.

Students in your Area
Local students may have a privacy hold on their record requesting that they be contacted only by official University business. Student lists are pulled based on address. If a student listed their Madison address, or is using the address of a parent who resides in Wisconsin, that student will not appear on your student list. There are also situations where a media story may indicate that a student is going to the University of Wisconsin only to discover that the student is attending a UW System school.

Recruiting Transfer Students
If your chapter provides scholarships to transfer students from UW System two-year colleges or technical colleges, you may choose to work with staff at those colleges. They can often select the scholarship recipients based on their knowledge of the student’s qualifications.

Student-Athletes
Chapters should check with UW Compliance before awarding a scholarship to a prospective student-athlete who will attend the UW and participate on an athletic team, or any student identified as a “prospect.” For more information, contact Steve Waterfield.

Have a scholarship committee in place. This should be headed by a chair and can include high school counselors. This committee will be responsible for creating an evaluation process that should include values for academics, extracurricular activities and financial need for each applicant. This committee will also select the recipients.

See your Chapter Leader Handbook if you are looking for additional information, and don't hesitate to contact your assigned WAA Chapter Representative if you have questions.

The committee should use a standard evaluation form to help ensure a consistent and objective review. You will assign values for academics, extracurricular activities and financial need for each applicant, and then use these values to rank each applicant. A combination of all the reviewers’ rankings provides an overall ranking for selection of scholarship recipients. You may also interview the applicants in person, but be sure to ask each one the same questions to ensure fairness.

UW-Madison cannot achieve its mission of providing an excellent undergraduate education unless the students, faculty and staff become more diverse. To help us achieve that goal, WAA strongly encourages you to offer scholarships to the best and brightest students of color in your area. Also offer scholarships based on financial need, not just merit. It can be a major consideration for students deciding between colleges competing for their admission.

• How do you plan to finance your education?
• Please explain in detail your financial need for this scholarship.
• Are you presently employed? How many hours per week do you work?
• Do you expect to be employed during your the academic year/semester for which the scholarship is awarded? If so, how many hours per week?
• Are you receiving financial assistance from any other sources?
• If applying for needs-based scholarship award, you will need to file a financial aid application with the Financial Aid Office to be eligible for consideration.
• Ask for Expected Family Contribution (EFC) from a student’s FASFA form. To be eligible for a Pell Grant, this amount cannot exceed $4,050.
• Chapters may have students sign a Family Educational Rights & Privacy Act (FERPA) release this allows WAA to check their EFC with UW Student Financial Services.

Scholarship recipients should be notified of their award as quickly as possible; especially to let them know of any banquets or ceremonies they may be asked to attend. All applicants, both those selected as well as those not selected should be notified in writing in order to bring closure to the scholarship application process. Sending out news releases not only helps you honor the winners, but also gives your chapter some good visibility in the community. It’s a nice touch to grant each winner a certificate to show off. And be sure to keep in touch with them — scholarship winners often become volunteers as alumni.

After you select scholarship recipients let WAA know. Submit all scholarship honoree(s) information electronically.

Once WAA receives all scholarship honoree submissions, it is entered into a spreadsheet and the information is sent to the Office of Student Financial Services, who processes the forms and applies the student scholarships to tuition statements. Transmittal forms received after the July 1 deadline will not be processed in time to award money for fall semester. Transmittal forms received after January 1 will not be processed in time to award money for the spring semester.

The scholarship amount will then be deducted from each student’s tuition bill, and will later be reflected in the UW Foundation account report. Note that while the students will receive the awards at the beginning of the semester (fall, spring or both), the account from which the money was dispersed will not reflect the deduction until sometime after the start of the spring semester. It is critical that chapters remember this as they consider their gifts and provide the funds necessary to support them. Also note that the balance in the UW Foundation report does not reflect the match they provide. Unused scholarship money is returned to the chapter account without the matching fund.

Chapters should keep good records of the scholarship funds deposited and withdrawn from the UW Foundation account. Please keep in mind that although scholarships are typically awarded in spring and used by the recipient during the following fall and spring, they are not billed or withdrawn from the chapter account and matched by the UW Foundation until the end of the academic year. The chapter records should be reconciled periodically with the UW Foundation account reports.

Because of the high turnover of volunteers, and the confusion caused by the delay in withdrawing scholarship funds, WAA has limited individual access to scholarship accounts.

The scholarship chair should review the account balance and recommend an amount to be awarded for the following year. The chapter also needs to decide whether scholarships should be awarded on a semester or yearly basis.