APPly: A Design of an Online Tertiary Level Scholarship Application Management System

Abstract

Scholarship applications are continually escalating, 58% of families availed scholarships as it serves as a financial aid for college. The increasing number of scholarship applications caused difficulty in processing the applications without a time delay due to a large volume of requests received by the scholarship institutions. The present study investigated the effectiveness, efficacy, and efficiency of using scholarship management systems to manage scholarships at a Philippine University. Considering the rising applications for the Need-Based Academic Scholarship (NBAS), it became the primary focus of the study. The study utilizes the descriptive quantitative method wherein the data is statistically treated using descriptive statistics. The respondents consisted of 15 applicants and three scholarship administrators. The results showed that the web-based management system, APPly, received an overall PSSUQ score of 1.35 for the applicant-user and 1.46 for the administrator-user. The users rated the system’s usefulness at 1.27 and 1.33, respectively. The application was met positively by both use cases and was satisfied with its ease and the efficiency it offers for their tasks. Therefore, it is concluded that APPly is a functional scholarship management system as it satisfies the parameters set by the researchers. The study can be further improved by adding an SMS notification system, connecting the application to a centralized file and fund management system to simplify the scholarship transaction processes, and integrating it to be available for mobile use and into the university’s existing system.