Medicine Hat student creates free scholarship website for Alberta students, gains provincial attention

The site includes 23 scholarships specific to Medicine Hat and does not require users to register or provide personal information to browse listings.

“It’s just something that did not exist before,” Ivanov said.

“I was looking for something like this myself, and I couldn’t find it, so I thought that with the knowledge, with the skills I have, I’ll just try to create it myself.”

ScholarAB has gained traction across the province, including more than 10,000 visits in the two days after gaining recognition from Premier Danielle Smith, who shared the website.

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(Image Credit: Courtesy/Ilia Ivanov)

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Since mid-September, the site has recorded more than 25,000 visits from Canada and 65,000 page views in the country.

It has also appeared in Google search results more than 115,000 times since launching.

Students have clicked through to scholarship applications about 4,000 times since July, with monthly clicks rising from 106 in July to 2,306 in October.

Ivanov said the response has been rewarding, particularly because he initially had no idea how widely the website might be used.

“It’s rewarding seeing that people are using it, liking it, and it’s being useful in the whole province,” he said.

Ivanov built the website after finding that many existing scholarship resources required users to create accounts before accessing listings, and he wanted ScholarAB to make the process more straightforward and reduce barriers for students looking for financial support.

The website allows users to save scholarships directly in their browser, with the information stored locally on their device rather than in a central database.

Students can also optionally provide an email address to receive reminders 30, 14 and three days before an application deadline.

Behind the scenes, Ivanov uses scripts to collect scholarship information and check links, and has weekly reports identifying broken links so he can update listings or remove opportunities that are no longer available.

Ivanov said he reviews the information regularly and encourages users to report outdated or incorrect details.

The project is independent of Medicine Hat High School, although Ivanov sought early feedback from teachers while developing it, saying he has largely learned the technical skills through independent research and by studying how larger companies build and maintain their websites.

While the site currently focuses on Alberta students, it includes some scholarships available to students attending post-secondary institutions elsewhere in Canada.

Ivanov said his immediate priority is to increase awareness among Alberta high schools and guidance counsellors, gather feedback and improve the platform before expanding further.

He hopes ScholarAB can eventually become a go-to resource for students across the province.

“The message I’m trying to bring into the sphere is that when you’re building honest projects with transparent structures, they’re not being made to monetize or take advantage of people,” Ivanov said.

Ivanov is open to sponsorships and other ways of supporting the website’s growth, provided students can continue using its core features for free, and access is not restricted by mandatory accounts.

As he prepares to graduate, Ivanov is applying to the University of Alberta and the University of Calgary, considering studying business, economics or politics.

For now, he plans to continue developing ScholarAB while helping more students discover scholarship opportunities they might otherwise miss.

by Jett Schwaier

Medicine Hat student creates free scholarship website for Alberta students, gains provincial attention

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