Background
Scholar Snapp and the College Board are partnering to improve the scholarship application experience, making it faster and easier for students to connect to scholarships that will help them pursue a college degree. The College Board helps more than seven million students prepare for college each year. Through this partnership, we will engage a vast network of students at a critical stage in the college journey, bringing proven technology solutions to scale.
For students with a College Board account, Scholar Snapp makes it easy to populate applications to select scholarship providers with their information on file - so students can apply in a fraction of the time. Whether applying through the College Board scholarship listing, or directly through a participating scholarship provider’s website, students can reuse their information from one application to another by logging into their College Board account. Students may have an existing College Board account through programs and services such as SAT, Advanced Placement, or BigFuture. If students don’t have an existing account, they can sign up for free at collegeboard.org.
Like Scholar Snapp, the College Board is committed to protecting student data privacy and is an active signatory of the Student Data Privacy Pledge. The organization follows a set of privacy principles that govern how data is utilized to create opportunities for students. That data is an integral part of how the College Board works with members to help students access and succeed in college. Learn more about College Board’s privacy policy at about.collegeboard.org/privacy-center.
Programmatic FAQs
How does the partnership impact me as a Scholar Snapp-enabled provider? As of October 1, 2020,Scholar Snapp functionality will only be available through integration with the College Board. You must take action to maintain your application integration. We will work closely with your team to address transition requirements and will serve as a resource should you have any questions throughout the process.
Longer-term, how will the partnership impact my application integration? The College Board willbe home to all aspects of the student-facing Scholar Snapp experience. This includes the student profile, where students can review and edit their information, as well as the functionality that allows them to reuse their information from one application to another. As a partner with Scholar Snapp integration, your team will work directly with the College Board on technical implementation, while Scholar Snapp will continue to maintain the data standard.
Will this partnership increase the number of applications we receive? Not necessarily, though one of the advantages of this partnership is reaching a broader network of students at a critical stage in their college journeys. Integration with Scholar Snapp does not automatically send new applications to your system. The system exchanges data only after the student has logged in to an online application, which is typically after an eligibility screen. Scholar Snapp does not change your application process, and you can determine where you want to offer the data import and export for your students that best fits your program.
How will the partnership change the application experience for students? While the application process will be similar, students will access their account, edit personal information, and connect with scholarship opportunities at collegeboard.org. When applying directly on the application of a scholarship provider with Scholar Snapp integration, students will be able to log in with their College Board account to reuse their information and apply quickly and easily. Additionally, Scholar Snapp information and resources for students, including FAQs and technical support currently hosted at ScholarSnapp.com, will now be managed by the College Board.
The College Board administers the SAT. Will students be able to create an account and use these scholarship services if they take the ACT only? Yes, any student can create a free account at collegeboard.org. Students will be able to save ACT scores within their College Board account.
Technical FAQs
What’s changing about the user experience and user interface? With hosting through the College Board, the same core functions will remain; however, users can expect changes to the user interface(e.g., new user registration, authorization of data transfers, etc.). The College Board will continue to engage with students and conduct user research to build on the existing tool and help connect even more students to scholarship opportunities.
What’s changing about the API specifications? Similar to Scholar Snapp Central, the College Board will use an OAuth2-based API which allows applicants to authorize the exchange of their profile data from within any online application form. The College Board data hub will use JSON to structure control information, acting as a “wrapper” for the XML payload. Essentially, the College Board will use the same core technology as Scholar Snapp, while supporting greater scale (i.e., more users and more concurrent users). Performance from a client system will be the same or better, especially during busy times.
What is the timeline for launch? Scholar Snapp functionality will be available through the College Board as of October 1, 2020. Development will be completed on an earlier time frame, with contingency built into our schedule to ensure we’re ready to go live on our target date. A staging environment will be available in May. We will be in close communication with integrated vendors regarding the development timeline.
My application opens before the College Board system will be live. What’s the transition plan for systems like mine? We recommend connecting to the staging server to make required configuration and user interface updates, so you’re prepared to switch over when the time is right. Our technical team at the College Board will be there to support you through the transition process.
Won't this change be expensive? Generally speaking, no. This should be a relatively simple configuration change for most systems along with an update to the user interface on your application. We are doing everything we can to minimize the technical lift, including launching with the same API specifications as Scholar Snapp. The College Board has dedicated technical resources to support the technical transition and answer questions. Our goal is to ensure the transition of your integration is as quick and efficient as possible.
How will this work from a technical and logistics perspective? The College Board is developing a pre-transition checklist to help avoid or mitigate any issues. Technical documentation will be available shortly.