Scholarship
VAN VLECK SCHOLARSHIP
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.
Rules and Procedures
The Van Vleck Scholarship is awarded based on a timed and proctored competitive written examination (the Van Vleck Scholarship exam) offered at various UW-System campuses around Wisconsin each April within the framework of the Wisconsin Mathematics, Engineering and Science Talent Search, here forward referred to as the “Talent Search.”
The Talent Search publishes problem sets monthly from October through February for middle and high school students in Wisconsin. Students are able to work on each problem set for approximately one month. The top 25 scoring students from Wisconsin on the first four problem sets will be invited to participate in the Van Vleck Scholarship Exam to compete for the scholarship. The exam occurs annually in April, and all students invited to take the scholarship exam are also invited to the Talent Search Honors Day at UW–Madison in May.
The scholarship winner is 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 the scholarship. In that event, no winner will be declared, and no scholarship awarded that year.
Scholarship winners will be offered the Van Vleck scholarship when they enroll as freshmen at UW–Madison. Enrollment must occur no later than the fall semester following their scheduled high school graduation. The scholarship will remain in place, at an amount of $3,000 per semester (up to $6,000 total for the academic year) for up to eight consecutive semesters, but only for undergraduate study. If the winner graduates with an undergraduate degree in fewer than eight semesters, the remainder of the award will be forfeited. The student must demonstrate satisfactory academic performance at UW–Madison by maintaining a cumulative GPA of 3.0. The scholarship will terminate if the student fails to enroll in any semester. Requests for leaves of absence will be considered.
The UW–Madison Department of Mathematics reserves the right to modify these rules and procedures.
Revised March 2026