Each year, top Wisconsin performers in the Talent Search will be eligible to compete for the Van Vleck Scholarship at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. The scholarship will pay $6,000 per year for four years. Details of the scholarship and of the competition will be mailed to the high scorers.

Previous Winners 

Rules and Procedures

The Van Vleck scholarship consists of $6000 per year for four years, awarded for undergraduate study at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. It is the top prize in the Mathematics, Science and Engineering Talent Search, conducted by the Mathematics Department of the UW-Madison. Generally, one Van Vleck scholarship will be awarded each year to a student at a high school or middle school in the State of Wisconsin. In some years, if finances permit, more than one scholarship may be awarded.

The Van Vleck scholarship is awarded on the basis of an invitational timed and proctored competitive written examination offered at various locations in Wisconsin each April. Each year, those students (and only those) who have performed well enough on the Talent Search problems to have earned an invitation to the Talent Search Honors Day ceremonies in Madison, will be invited to compete for the scholarship. (Honors Day invitations will generally be based on the student’s performance on the first four Talent Search problem sets in each academic year.)

Normally, there will be one winner and one or two runners-up, and the names of these individuals will be announced at the Honors Day ceremonies in May. (Although students with the proven abilities of Talent Search honorees are certainly expected to perform well on the examination, it is possible that none of the scores will be deemed sufficient to earn a scholarship. In that unlikely event, no winner will be declared, and no scholarship awarded that year. It may also happen in some years that there will be a winner, but no runners-up and occasionally, there may be more than one winner.)

Winners will be offered Van Vleck scholarships which will become effective if and when they enroll as freshmen at UW-Madison, provided that that occurs not later than the fall semester following their scheduled high school graduation. The scholarship will remain in force, and will pay $3000 each semester for up to eight semesters, only as long as the student continues to demonstrate satisfactory academic performance at UW-Madison. (A scholarship will normally terminate if the holder fails to enroll in any semester, but requests for leaves of absence will be considered.)

If a winner declines a scholarship before the end of May in the year that it is awarded, (for example, because he or she is a graduating senior who is planning to attend another university) one of the runners-up, if there are any, will be declared a winner and receive a scholarship offer, subject to these same rules. Runner-up eligibility expires at the end of May.

The UW-Madison Mathematics Department, in conjunction with appropriate University authorities, may modify these rules and procedures from time to time.