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Example of firebase database.
Inspiration
Our MESA engineering club director likes to send the students an excel sheet with scholarship links and resources. However, the excel sheet is usually out of date and will oftentimes link to 404s or scholarships that have long passed their due date. We also noticed that scholarship resources for Dreamers are especially impacted by this. We wanted to make a page that can be updated with scholarships and be specialized for different minority groups. We believed in making dedicated pages for different groups so we started off by making an example of a Latinx Scholarship resource page. We are also especially unpleased with sites like Unigo and Scholarships.com which require users to sign up and potentially join their mailing list. We believe in having a dedicated page where students of different groups can continuously go to in order to keep up to date with scholarships tailored for their needs.
What it does
The page displays a table of scholarships alongside their due date and reward. Users can then click a button to sort by Name, Date, or Reward which could be useful if the table gets long enough. From there they can click the link to apply to the scholarship.
How we built it
Using firebase, we store scholarship data in a database that will be called on by the website to display to the user. The data includes the URL, the name, the due date, and the reward money. From there, we convert the data onto a table within the page to then begin displaying to the user. However, if the scholarship is past its due date, the page will not show the scholarship to the user. Users can then click on the name to go to the respective scholarship application page. The buttons call a function to allow the page to sort by a string name, a number reward, or a date object.
Challenges we ran into
Since this is the first time we have ever used Firebase, we ran into some problems setting it up but we managed to complete it. In the meantime, we temporarily used a JSON file to contain the data until we figured out how to use Firebase.
Accomplishments that I'm proud of
We learned firebase and we finished a working prototype on time.
What we learned
We learned how to use Firebase. We plan on using it for many projects to come. Now that we understand how to use it and what it can potentially do, we can't wait to put the features to the test.
What's next for Minority Scholarships
We will begin working with our MESA director to test out the page with a small user group at our school which can help us gather feedback ideas for features. We plan on updating the UI elements to be more appealing while also adding new pages and features. We want to add a scholarship advice tab to help with scholarship applications for minority groups who may be 1st generation, college students. After that, we plan on getting help to gather and maintain a large scholarship list in order to facilitate pages for African Americans, Asian Americans, Dreamers, and other minority groups. We hope to build-up to the point where scholarship offerers begin contacting us to submit their scholarships on our page.
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