# Scholarship calls and application management for a foundation > Online application with household data and documents, review with written opinions, home visits, pending items and appeals, all with a decision trail. Source: https://boosting.tech/en/case-studies/scholarship-management/ The client is not named. We describe the sector, the problem and what was built. **Case summary:** An educational foundation received scholarship applications on forms and in folders of documents. We built a system in which the applicant fills in the application online with household data, the committee reviews it and records opinions, pending items and visits, and the applicant follows the result and files an appeal in the same system. - Sector: Educational foundation - Users: Applicants, financial guardians, social workers and the review committee - Platform: Responsive web system - Technology: Ruby on Rails, Hotwire, PostgreSQL, Bootstrap - Evolving since: 2024 ## What the system does - Calls with rules and periods - Multi-step application with drafts - Household, income, expenses and assets - Upload of documents and proofs - Socioeconomic review opinion - Pending items and correction by the applicant - Home visit - Appeal - PDF document generation ## What was the problem? A scholarship process has a lot of documents and a lot of rules. Each applicant declares who lives in the household, how much each person earns, what the expenses and assets are, and proves all of it. The committee needs to check, ask for what is missing, record its opinion and answer appeals within the deadline of the call. On paper, that meant folders, manual checking and difficulty knowing where each application stood. ## What was built? A system with two sides. The applicant has a multi-step form that can be saved as a draft and resumed later. They register the household, each person's income and expenses, the family's assets and businesses, and attach proof for each item. The committee has the queue of applications per call. Each application goes through defined statuses: draft, submitted, pending, corrected, granted, denied and under appeal. A status change triggers the right notice to the applicant. ## How does it work day to day? The reviewer opens a submitted application and checks the data against the documents. If something is missing, they record a pending item, and the application goes back to the applicant to correct just that point. When the case calls for it, they schedule and record a home visit. The system calculates the household's income per person, which is one of the review criteria. The opinion is recorded with the name of whoever decided. After the result, the applicant can file an appeal in the system, and the committee answers in the same place. ## What changed in the operation? Each application now has a status visible to the applicant and to the committee. The committee stopped checking folders and started working from a queue. Decisions are recorded with author and date, which helps with accountability reports. This case shows that [custom web systems](/en/services/custom-web-systems/) work well outside industry. The same design of a multi-step form, review and decision appears in the [industrial access control](/en/case-studies/industrial-access-control/) case. If your organization handles sensitive data, see how we treat data protection in [support and modernization](/en/services/support-and-modernization/). ## Frequently asked questions about scholarship management systems ### Can applicants fill it in on a phone? Yes. The form is responsive and saves the draft, so a person can fill it in a little at a time and attach photos of documents straight from the phone. ### Rules change with each call. Does the system keep up? Yes. Each call has its own rules and periods, and applications stay linked to the call they were made under. ### How are applicants' documents protected? Files are kept in private storage and are only opened by authorized users. The system logs when attachments are viewed.