By Emily Fox · Editor-in-Chief
Junior business analysis and supply chain management double major Matthew Hammond earned the title of Pennsylvania Microsoft Excel champion after achieving a perfect score on his certification exam last fall.
Hammond was required to take the exam for MNGT 110, a course he took with business analytics professor Ryan Miller, which was designed to teach students to fully harness the power of Excel. Though the course was not a requisite for either of his majors, Hammond believed it would teach him valuable skills he could take with him into the workforce.
“I chose to take the class to prepare me for the business world,” he said. “I believed Excel would very likely be an important part of my future career, so I wanted to become very familiar with the concepts.”
For the certification exam, students were given a set of data for a fictional business. They then had to use skills they learned in the class, such as formatting, inserting formulas and creating graphs, to solve seven problems with five to six parts each. Hammond achieved the highest possible score, 1000 points, and received an invitation to Certiport’s 2026 Microsoft Office Suite U.S. National Championship this summer.
“His performance wasn’t accidental – it was the result of disciplined preparation, persistence through setbacks and a commitment to mastery,” Miller said in a Grove City College news release. “Matthew’s achievement reflects both technical excellence and the professional work ethic that will serve him extremely well in his career.”
The MOS U.S. National Championship invites the best-performing students on Microsoft’s six certification exams from each state to compete against each other. Students between the ages of 13 and 22 can enter, and 12 students go to the national competition from two qualifying rounds, one in the fall and the other in the spring. Along with Excel, students can qualify for championships by receiving the highest score on Microsoft Word or Microsoft PowerPoint exams.
Because of an internship he has this summer, Hammond likely will not compete in the competition, but he hopes to use the skills he has developed working in business as a supply chain manager, in sales and operations planning or as an operations analyst after graduating.
“Excel is a fantastic tool to sort, store and analyze data.
This same data is used to understand where areas for improvement are in a company, whether for marketing, product lines or supplier relationships,” Hammond said in the release. “I can’t wait to apply the skills I learned in this class to the real world.”
