Inspiration Finding scholarships is stressful. Students spend hours searching across different websites, only to miss deadlines or not know if they’re even eligible. Many give up because the process feels overwhelming. We wanted to build a one stop platform that makes scholarships easy to find, track, and apply for.
What it does Scholarship Finder: Filter scholarships by level, country, and funding type. Scholarship Cards: Clean, detailed cards with eligibility, deadlines, and apply links. Checklist: Auto-generated steps (eligibility, documents, tests, SOP, etc.) to guide students. FAQs: A full section answering the most common scholarship questions.
How we built it Backend: Flask (Python) with Pandas to load, clean, and filter CSV-based scholarship data. Frontend: TailwindCSS + Jinja HTML templates for a colorful, responsive design. Authentication: User accounts with signup/login/logout using secure password hashing. Data: Created a cleaned CSV with global scholarships (title, country, level, funding, eligibility, official URL). Extras: Added FAQs page and a checklist system that saves user progress.
Challenges we ran into Cleaning messy, inconsistent data (different naming, missing fields). Escaping Python f-strings inside HTML without breaking the code. Designing a UI that was simple but not boring (fixed with Tailwind). Managing session data across multiple features in Flask. Time pressure: could not fully integrate the AI chatbot yet.
Accomplishments that we're proud of Built a fully working MVP in a short time. Created a modern and colorful UI that students actually enjoy using. Made scholarships easy to search and filter in one place. Checklist + FAQs help students stay on track. Laid the foundation for an AI-powered scholarship assistant.
What we learned How to build a full-stack app with Flask + Tailwind. The importance of user-centered design (bigger filters, clear scholarship cards). Handling real-world data cleaning with Pandas. How to save and load user-specific data securely. That even small design changes (color, spacing, layout) make a huge difference in usability.
What's next for ScholarAI Add a real AI chatbot (OpenAI API integration) to answer custom scholarship questions. Expand database to include 1000+ global scholarships. Personalized dashboards with progress tracking. Add deadline reminders via email or notifications. Deploy on cloud so students worldwide can use ScholarAI.
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