The Metro Washington DC Chapter Scholarship
The MWCPSAA scholarship endowment is run through the Pennsylvania State University; therefore, we can only award scholarships to students who meet the University's requirements for financial aide. This prevents any favoritism or unethical handling of the funds. Any students that are entering their first year of Penn State and are from the Metro Washington DC Area (DC, Virginia and Maryland) are welcome to apply for the scholarship! Over 90 first year students in the Metro Washington DC area apply for our Scholarship every year!
Over the last 5 years, the Metro Washington DC Chapter of the Penn State Alumni Association has been able to donate over $100,000 to students from our area!
Throughout the year, we hold fundraisers that raise money that goes into the total funds raises to be awarded to the first year Penn State students. These fundraisers include our annual golf tournament (held at Pleasant Valley Golf Course), Cause Tuesdays, Football Watch Parties, happy hours, selling tickets for raffle prizes, etc!
Choosing Scholarship Recipients
Each year in the May/June timeframe, the Penn State Office of Financial Aid sends the Student Affairs Chairperson a list of local (DC/MD/VA) students ranked by both financial need and academic potential (based on high school GPA).
The Scholarship Committee sends an email to the eligible students inviting them to apply. After applications are received and reviewed by the committee. Approximately 10-15 candidates with the best written applications are invited to a formal interview.
After the formal interview, the Scholarship committee makes two decisions:
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Who to award a scholarship to, and
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How much to award each winner.
The factors that we use in that dermination are financial need, academic potential, quality of written responses, and quality of the verbal responses. Our chapter treasurer then writes a check to the University, and the funds are awarded and dispersed to the individual student accounts by the Bursar's office!
Read a few stories from past reciepients of the
Metro Washington DC Chapter Scholarship
