Background

The Scholar Snapp Data Standard was developed in 2008 with funding from the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation. The standard development effort was led by the National Scholarship Providers Association (NSPA) with members who represented many perspectives from the scholarship industry. The data standard was initially used as a specification for download file. In the years since 2008, the standard has evolved – and currently forms the data payload for an API-based network of scholarship application providers.

Technically speaking, the Scholar Snapp Data Standard is an XSD specification that defines a single scholarship application for a single student. The Snapp Data Standard contains core information about the student such as their name, contact information, academic history, file attachments, and so forth. The Snapp Data Standard also contains a few context fields, such as when the file was created and the name of the system that originated the file.

What is this Documentation?

This documentation describes the general organization of the Snapp Data Standard. This documentation is also a companion piece to the relatively terse annotation in XSD by providing general guidelines, additional context, implementation notes, and illustrative examples.