Scholarship-Student Matching Process Optimization

Abstract

Students need the support of financial aid to help them pay for college tuition and fees. One source of financial aid comes from scholarships. Universities are a primary source for scholarships. The University of Oklahoma Gallogly College of Engineering awards a number of scholarships to students each academic year. The committee who is responsible for the distribution of scholarships has to decide which student applicant receives a particular scholarship. This thesis focuses on how to optimize the matching of scholarships and students, taking into consideration the requirements of the scholarship and the credentials of students who are applying for the scholarship. This thesis approaches the process of matching students with scholarships in two ways. First, matching can be done from the scholarship side, which only considers the requirements of the scholarship and ranks the students based on how well they meet the scholarship requirements. Second, matching can be done from both sides, considering the requirements of the scholarship and the value of the award for the student. The matching results show that the first approach has a higher number of matching sets of scholarship and student.