The Brook Church-Koegel Scholarship is a $1,000 award, funded personally by Brook Church-Koegel and paid to the recipient's college or university and applied 100% to tuition, for one student enrolled at an accredited college or university in the United States. Undergraduate and graduate students are both eligible, in any major, with no GPA cutoff — and there is never a fee to apply. The program lives on its own site, brookchurchkoegelscholarship.com. This page is the short version: why the award exists, who can apply, when the 2026 cycle closes, what the essay asks, and where to submit.
Why it exists
Markets rise and fall. An education is the one asset no market can take back. That conviction runs through most of what Brook has built: two of his four ventures — the Insurance Education Institute and Advisors Edge — exist to give financial professionals real fluency in the quantitative investment methods behind the products they sell. Education built by practitioners, for practitioners.
It is also older than his career. Brook's first leadership role came earlier than most executives' entire careers. As a boy in El Segundo, California, he was an active member of his local Boy Scout troop — the same troop that, together with his sister's Girl Scout troop, founded what would become known as the world's first nonprofit organization founded by kids and run by kids: Tree Musketeers. He served as Tree Musketeers' president from 1987 to 1994, remained an active volunteer for more than two decades afterward, and in 2017, alongside his sister and mother, helped oversee the organization's formal wind-down after three decades of operation.
Scouting and Tree Musketeers instilled the grounding in service, discipline, and organizational leadership that Brook credits as foundational to who he is today. The scholarship points that same conviction at students. It is funded personally by Brook Church-Koegel, it goes to a student who is building something, and it costs nothing to apply. There is never a fee, and applicants are never asked for payment information.
What it is
The terms are deliberately short.
- A $1,000 award, paid to the recipient's college or university and applied 100% to tuition.
- One recipient, awarded annually.
- Open to undergraduate and graduate students.
- Any accredited U.S. college or university.
- Any major.
- No GPA cutoff.
- U.S.-based student; citizenship is not required.
- Never a fee to apply, and never a request for payment information.
This is a summary. The official rules contain the full eligibility, selection, enrollment-verification, payment and publicity terms.
Key dates — 2026 cycle
The 2026 cycle runs on the schedule below. All times are U.S. Pacific.
- December 1, 2026, 11:59 PM PT — applications close.
- December 1–10 — review and selection.
- December 11, 2026 — the recipient is notified by email. Their name is announced on the scholarship's Updates page only with written consent after selection.
- Mid-December — disbursement is coordinated with the recipient's institution.
The essay
The application centers on one essay, written to a single prompt.
Tell us about something you've built — a project, an organization, a skill, a body of work — and what it taught you about building things that last.
Essays run 500–800 words.
The phrase is not an accident. Building things that last is the through-line of Brook's own story, from a kid-run nonprofit in El Segundo to Alpha Capital Management, formed in California in 2020 after his first fund launched in 2018 — and the essay asks for yours. The prompt is broad on purpose: the thing you built can be a project, an organization, a skill, or a body of work. What matters is what building it taught you.
How to apply
The scholarship has its own site, with the application route, full eligibility rules, FAQ and Updates page. The Apply page leads to the online application form; the Updates page reports awards and identifies a recipient only with their written consent after selection.
Questions about the program can be sent to info@alphacap.co.