Since its inception, The Thomas and Elsie Foundation has awarded over $2,000,000 worth of scholarships to more than 55 Sacred Heart High School 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.

The following chart shows the number of students receiving Deeley Foundation scholarships for any given academic year.  While the number of students receiving aid varies from year to year, the trend over time is towards increasing the number of students 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 18 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, 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; a figure that 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.  As you can see from the following chart, a significant portion of our scholarships are given to students attending state universities, in particular, the University of Connecticut which is not one of our partners.

Our 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 over-riding one.  The chart below illustrates that almost two-thirds of our scholarship recipients are NOT in the top 10% of the class academically.

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

Many of our scholarship recipients have volunteered to serve as mentors to newer scholarship students, either those attending the same college or those enrolled in the same major.   Whenever possible we assign a previous scholarship recipient to mentor a new recipient. Currently, we have more volunteers than we can use; either because we don’t have students at their colleges or 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.  The Deeley Foundation is extremely appreciative of these students who are helping us “pay it forward”.

Whenever possible; The Thomas and Elsie Deeley Foundation tries to remain in contact with former scholarship recipients. We continue to offer guidance and advice and ask former recipients to serve as mentors for recent scholarship recipients. To see what many of our former recipients have achieved and are currently doing, please go to the Updates On Past Scholarship Recipients page of our website.