2024 Scholarship Winners

I am excited to announce this year’s Excel University scholarship winners! This scholarship is supported by the Excel University Alumni Association, so thanks to all of you who have helped make these awards possible over the past 9 years.

This was a very competitive scholarship year with many applicants! Thanks to all of the students who applied, I know you have bright futures ahead.

The selected recipients stand out among their peers, and are terrific examples of the type of accounting student that the scholarship program was designed to assist. They are wonderful representations of the future of our profession. They are smart, hard-working, highly recommended by their professors, have incredible GPAs, intend to be CPAs, and I was impressed by their accomplishments and service.

Congratulations to the 2024 Excel University Scholarship winners!

• Winner of the Excel University Academic Merit Scholarship: Claire
• Winner of the Excel University Skill Builder Scholarship: Kylee

As part of the scholarship application, I asked for a short essay Interesting Ways I’ve Used Excel. I’d like to share portions of these essays below.

Claire

While attending school, Claire is the treasurer in two different clubs, an athlete, a scholastic team member, works on and off campus, and makes time for community service, all while maintaining a perfect GPA. She intends to be a CPA after graduating with a B.S. in Accounting.

Her accounting professor said that she not only scores well on homework and exams, but also works on campus making her academic performance all the more impressive. Claire is attentive and is always ready to answer questions. She has great relationships with her fellow students which will serve her well as she proceeds in her career.

Here are a few highlights from her essay:

My first semester in college … I took a class on how to use Excel. The class quickly became my favorite, to the point I even did an optional extra credit option to finish the class with an overall grade of 106%.

One of the goals of the class was the practical application of Excel. To accomplish this, the professor assigned a project with the goal of creating a useful workbook for a nonprofit, one we had to find ourselves. We sorted through the data to find how many students each school sent, how many placed, how many won, and the average of each of those categories, compiled by grade, age range, and subject. Despite the professor’s warning not to expect a high grade on the project, my group received a perfect score.

Throughout the same semester, I also used Excel for my own purposes. I created general journal, balance sheet, and income statement templates to use for my accounting class, with built-in formatting to indent my credit entries. I also created a full week schedule for myself, color-coding the sections with formatting settings that changed the color based on the event types into the slot.

I took an accounting software class, where I worked with a real company’s data with a new software. My team quickly discovered that the question we had been asked to answer was beyond the skills we were being taught in the class, so we turned to Excel, experimenting with formulas to parse through the data and label it. A project originally about software-learning turned into data-analysis, and Excel allowed us to complete the analysis.

Kylee

While attending school, Kylee is pursuing a major in Accounting and a minor in Business Analytics. While maintaining a perfect GPA, she also works on campus, is a student athlete, and is a member of university clubs. She plans to sit for the CPA exam upon graduation.

Her professor said that she is hardworking, respectful, and a leader in the classroom. Her attention to detail on her assignments and her organization skills set her apart. She engages in great conversation and has a questioning mind, like all good accountants should have. These traits will serve her well as a CPA.

Here are a few highlights from her essay:

To understand a real-world example of statistics and a way to use Excel, I completed a project in my Applied Statistics course using a single factor ANOVA test to determine if our Women’s Volleyball team’s three-point serve receive passing percentage is equal throughout all rotations. While doing this project, I learned how to collect and organize data in Microsoft Excel, use the single factor ANOVA test in the Excel functions, and analyze the results. Some future tests I could do with this data are multiple regression and Chi-Square tests which I have also learned how to do in Microsoft Excel.

Another example of how I have used Excel in my personal life is tracking my finances on a spreadsheet. I have different columns for spending, college savings, gifts, gas, and groceries. When I get paid, I will go into my spreadsheet and put a certain percentage of my check in each column and subtract out any money that I have spent. I have found by using this spreadsheet that I am more diligent about saving and will spend less money.

Even though I have used Excel for a couple of years, I know there is still so much more to learn about using Excel and all it has to offer. Excel is a great tool used every day in accounting and I know I will have to learn a lot more about it.

Once again, congratulations to our scholarship winners!

Again … a big THANK YOU to the Excel University Alumni Association members because your enrollments support this scholarship program!