Applicant Workflow Platform
EWS Scholarship Portal
Application intake, document verification, interview scheduling, and merit calculation for a scholarship program.
Overview
Problem
A scholarship program's intake, document verification, interviews, and merit-based selection were coordinated manually over email, leaving applicants guessing about status.
Solution
An end-to-end applicant portal covering intake, documents, interviews, and automated merit calculation, with WhatsApp updates at every stage.
Architecture
Client
Applicant-facing intake/status portal and an admin review dashboard.
Documents
Cloudinary handling upload, storage, and delivery of documents.
Workflow
Stage-based pipeline: intake → document review → interview → decision.
Data
MongoDB storing applications, documents, interviews, and merit scores.
Feature Breakdown
- Applicant intake form with direct-to-Cloudinary document upload
- Interview scheduling and scoring with admin verification workflow
- Automated, auditable merit calculation from eligibility and interview data
Implementation Detail
function calculateMerit(applicant: Applicant): MeritScore {
const eligibility = scoreEligibility(applicant.income, applicant.category);
const interview = applicant.interviewScore ?? 0;
const documents = applicant.documentsVerified ? 1 : 0;
return {
total: eligibility * 0.5 + interview * 0.4 + documents * 0.1,
breakdown: { eligibility, interview, documents },
};
}Challenge & Solution
Applicants had no visibility into their status, and merit scoring needed to be transparent and consistent across a large pool.
Tied WhatsApp notifications to pipeline stage transitions, and implemented merit scoring as a pure, re-runnable function over stored applicant data.
Results
- Status inquiries to program staff dropped off — updates go out automatically.
- Every merit score can be recomputed and explained from the same inputs.