2023 PEO York Chapter Engineering Entrance Scholarship

PEO York Chapter is offering 1 University Engineering Entrance Scholarship valued at $1,500 this year.

The scholarship will be awarded on the basis of the student's community contributions, intra and extracurricular activities, and their intention to pursue a career as a Professional Engineer. To qualify for this award, the student must graduate with honors standing from a secondary school in York Region and be enrolled in an accredited engineering program at a Canadian university for the 2023-2024 academic year.

Deadline of application: June 30, 2023 at 11:59 PM

To apply for a scholarship, simply fill out the application form:

Please e-mail scholarship@peoyork.com if you have any questions or require additional information. If you have trouble opening the file, please log out of your Gapps account or use an incognito window and try again.

Info Session

A recording of last year's scholarship info session is available here: https://youtu.be/EdKCUZ1v0j0

Application Requirements

The Scholarship provides first-year engineering students with financial aid in an accredited engineering program in a Canadian university and introduces them to Professional Engineers of Ontario, a self-regulatory body that governs Ontario's 85,000 professional engineers.

To qualify for this scholarship, you (the applicant) must be a graduate student with honours from a secondary school located in York Region and be accepted and enrolled into an accredited engineering program at a Canadian University for the 2023-2024 school year. You (the applicant) must be entering the first-year of the accredited engineering program in Fall 2023. For a list of post-secondary institutions with accredited Engineering Programs in Canada refer to the link: https://www.engineerscanada.ca/accreditation/accredited-programs-by-institution.

The scholarship application consists of (1) the application form and (2) a video component.

Scholarship applicants must upload their application videos (of up to 4 minutes and 0 seconds) as "unlisted" on YouTube and then provide the link in this scholarship application Google form. The scholarship recipient must retain this video on Youtube until the scholarship evaluation process is complete.

Due to the volume of applications, only successful applicants will be contacted. The contacted applicants will be asked to provide the following documents to verify their status before the funding is released.

1. an official or certified true copy of their secondary school transcript, the same transcript that was used with university application
2. proof of enrolment in an accredited engineering program at a Canadian university

Scholarship recipients need to attend one or more of the current PEO York Chapter events in person and provide a short talk about their interest in the engineering discipline in order to receive the scholarship funds. In case that in-person events cannot be held, the recipient will be asked to attend a virtual PEO York Chapter event to provide the same short talk. The recipient(s) will be asked to provide an acceptance speech video for the PEO York Chapter YouTube channel and website.

Application Form Components

1. Basic personal contact and academic information
2. Information for 2 References (one teacher reference and another reference from the organization/business where you worked or made volunteer contributions)
3. Essay Section
4. Video Section
5. Survey Questions and additional info

Extracurricular Activities Involvement Essay Question

What are the skills you acquired during extracurricular activities? Please describe your extracurricular activities and hobbies, such as athletics, counselling, clubs, etc. and explain why you chose to be involved in these activities. Describe how your participation in these activities has helped to prepare you for a career as a Professional Engineer. (1800 characters maximum including spaces)

Community Involvement Essay Question

How did you help your community? Every high school student must complete 40 hours of volunteer service to graduate. Please describe how you have gone beyond this requirement and why you have taken the initiative to serve your community. Please summarize your community service, describe its impact, and indicate how it relates to your choice of profession (1800 characters maximum including spaces).

Letter of Intent Essay Question

Why do you want to be an engineer? Please explain in an essay format why you wish to become an engineer, including what you think are the values of the engineering profession to the public, and what your responsibilities would be as a Professional Engineer (1800 characters maximum including spaces). Please refer to the guiding questions below:

Applicants are encouraged to do additional research on the Professional Engineers Ontario and/or Engineer Canada website so that their answer to the "Why do you want to be an engineer" demonstrates, in the applicant's own words, understanding of:

1. What are the responsibilities of a professional engineer to the public/society?
2. How will you work towards taking on this responsibility?
3. What are the core values of the engineering profession?
4. How do you demonstrate these core values?

Video Submission Requirements

As part of the application, the applicant must submit a video of up to 4 minutes and zero seconds.

This video should:

1. Include a brief introduction of yourself (name, school, which engineering program you'll be going to)
2. Demonstrate how you have served the community or acquired skills during extracurricular activities
3. Demonstrate your understanding of what it means to be a professional engineer (e.g. serving the public, etc. from your research). What does being an engineer mean to you?
4. Showcase how you will use and build on your existing skills to work towards becoming a professional engineer and serve the profession and society.

How you structure and execute the video is up to you.

The video must be uploaded as an unlisted video onto YouTube with the video title: "2023 PEO York Entrance Scholarship Application - (Your Full Name)" by the application deadline. Please provide the YouTube video link in the application form.

Application Evaluation Process

After filtering for the minimum required grade, the application is evaluated only based on the applicant's intent, service to the community, and skills acquired during extracurricular activities. The application essays must be written by the applicant. Applications that contain copied elements will be rejected. The applicant should demonstrate an understanding of the responsibilities of a professional engineer to society and demonstrate the character and values required of a future professional engineer.

The application evaluation process will be as follows:

1. All applications will be checked for completion and plagiarism. Incomplete and plagiarized applications will be disqualified and discarded.
2. The identifying information of all applications will be hidden (e.g. name, gender, school) and replaced with an application number when sent to the application reviewers. The application videos will not be sent to the reviewers at this step yet.
3. Based on the application form component only, reviewers will conduct a round of reviews to determine the top 10 candidates for the scholarship recipients.
4. The application videos of the top 10 candidates are then reviewed by all reviewers.
5. The scholarship recipients are selected from the top 10 candidates based on the entire application (form + video).

It is encouraged that all applicants take a look through the full form before starting to prepare the full application. Please have your information and application video ready.

Past Scholarship Recipients