Since its inception, The Thomas and Elsie Foundation has awarded over $2,700,000 worth of scholarships to students.  There are usually between eight and fifteen scholarship students enrolled in colleges and universities during any academic year. The Deeley Foundation does not place any restrictions on the choice of schools; scholarship recipients are free to select any college or university they wish to attend.

While the number of students receiving aid varies from year to year, the trend over time is toward increasing the number receiving scholarships.  With our expanding number of partnership agreements, we expect that this increasing trend will continue in the future.

Our scholarship recipients have attended over thirty different colleges and universities.  Most students seem to prefer attending schools in the State of Connecticut.  In addition, several recipients elected to attend schools in Massachusetts.  Recipients have also attended schools in New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Florida, Vermont, and Virginia. The University of Connecticut is the most popular choice, followed by Fairfield University, Southern Connecticut State University, and Central Connecticut State University.

We are extremely proud of the graduation rate of our scholarship recipients.  Over 97% of our recipients graduate from college; this figure exceeds the success rate of almost every college in the country!  The chart below summarizes the wide array of colleges that our recipients have attended.

Students are not required to attend one of our partner schools, but many do.   More than half of our scholarship recipients elected to attend one of our partner schools.  This is not surprising since our objective in negotiating partnership agreements is to seek out those colleges and universities where significant numbers of our scholarship applicants apply.  

As you can see from the following chart, a significant portion of our scholarship funds is given to students attending schools in the State of Connecticut.  In particular, a large percentage of our funding goes to Fairfield University, the four state universities, and the University of Connecticut.  

Scholarships are not necessarily awarded to students who are the best academically in high school.  There are several factors that the selection committee considers when making scholarship awards, and academic success, while a factor, is not an overriding one.  The chart below illustrates that almost two-thirds of our scholarship recipients are NOT in the top 10% of their class academically.

More than half of our scholarship recipients have gone on to obtain advanced degrees.  Several have either obtained Doctorates or are working towards them.  The chart below depicts the distribution of these degrees.

Every scholarship recipient is assigned at least one former scholarship recipient as a mentor. We ask former scholarship recipients to volunteer as mentors to help us “pay it forward”. Every former scholarship recipient we have asked to serve as a mentor has enthusiastically agreed.  Currently, we have more volunteers than needed, either because we don’t have students at the colleges they attended or because we don’t have students majoring in their areas of expertise.

The students whose names are highlighted below are those scholarship recipients who either are serving or have already served as mentors and/or are providing assistance to one or more of our scholarship recipients.  Almost half of our previous scholarship recipients have volunteered to serve as mentors for newer recipients; several have volunteered multiple times!  The Deeley Foundation is extremely appreciative of these students who are helping us.

Whenever possible, The Thomas and Elsie Deeley Foundation tries to remain in contact with former scholarship recipients. We continue to offer guidance and advice on career choices and business decisions. To see what many of our former recipients have achieved and are currently doing, please go to the Updates On Past And Current Scholarship Recipients page of our website.