The Scholarship Program Information Data Exchange specification is operational in a few solutions, but the standard itself is in pre-release. This section outlines the changes in v1.0d, the latest draft of the specification.
The NSPA and Dell Foundation teams thank all the NSPA Members, implementers, technologists, and subject matter experts who provided input.
Overview
The information that follows describes changes in the latest version of Scholar Snapp.
The changes include:
Detail on each change follows.
Changes to the Data Model
This section describes changes to the data model, which defines the data payload representing a scholarship program.
Add Application Cycle Indicator (SSDS-92)
Many scholarship programs make awards every year. The program name, purpose, and core characteristics mostly remain the same year over year, but values do change. For example, long-running major programs typically raise their award amount over time, online application links change, and so forth. Although most scholarship listing services simply use the most current information, many organizations and analysts desire to see the change over time for scholarship programs.
This change will add a value indicating the scholarship application cycle to which a particular record applies, allowing systems to support historical and longitudinal analysis of programs over time.
Change Detail
Format. The value should follow the school academic year format (e.g., 2019-2020).
Usage details. The following general rules will apply to this element:
The element is optional. If a value is not present, the record is assumed to be the current record.
Typically, the scholarship application cycle will precede the academic year in which an award will be used (e.g., awards made in the 2019-2020 application cycle will be used by scholars in the 2020-2021 academic year).
Notionally, the application cycle starts August 1 and ends July 31 the following year — with the vast majority of programs both opening and closing between those dates. For example, in 2019, Dell Scholars Program opened October 1 and closed December 1, which puts it squarely in the 2019-2020 application cycle.
A program that’s always open will typically have multiple records. For example, a program that was open throughout calendar years 2018 and 2019 will have one record for 2018-2019 and another for 2019-2020.
The following XSD snippet shows the definition of the Application Cycle element:
...
<xs:element name="ApplicationCycle" type="spi:ShortString" minOccurs="0">
<xs:annotation>
<xs:documentation>The scholarship application cycle during which this program was accepting applications. Should be formatted as a school academic year (e.g., 2019-2020). Usually precedes the academic year in which the award will be used (e.g., awards in the 2019-2020 application cycle will be used in the 2020-2021 academic year).</xs:documentation>
</xs:annotation>
</xs:element>
...
The following XML snippet shows the new Application Cycle value:
...
<ApplicationCycle>2019-2020</ApplicationCycle>
...
Many scholarship programs have important properties related to the award duration. For example, it’s useful to know whether a program’s award is for a single year, or can be used across multiple years. For those programs that only offer single-year awards, it’s useful to know whether an applicant may re-apply for a subsequent award.
Change Detail
For Scholarship Exchange v1.0d, we’ve added the following information to the model:
An award duration type. To indicate the time period over which the award may be used. Values include “One-Time” (indicating a single point in time), “Multiyear” (indicating that the award spans multiple years), and “Renewable” (meaning that the award is a one-time award, but applicants are explicitly allowed to re-apply for subsequent years).
An award duration. For multiyear programs, indicates the number of years across which the award may be used. For renewable programs, indicates the number of renewal opportunities.
The following JSON snippet shows an example for a 4-year scholarship.
...
"AwardDuration": {
"AwardDurationType": "Multiyear",
"DurationYears": 4
},
...