ANN ARBOR—New University of Michigan-developed software allows the University to instantly match students with scholarships.

Here’s how it works: All the scholarship information is pre-loaded into the system. The scholarship coordinator selects an award from a drop-down menu and then hits a button. A list pops-up of eligible students.

U-M Administrative Information Services (MAIS) developed the automated system.

“To the best of our knowledge, we are the only ones with an automated process,” said Laura McCain Patterson, U-M associate vice president for Administrative Information Services. “All universities struggle with this issue and approach awarding scholarships differently. For example, Harvard uses a nomination process and selection committee.”

The scholarship matching tool was piloted in the summer of 2006 in U-M’s College of Engineering and the Stephen M. Ross School of Business to administer 269 different scholarships with 994 unique rules. In 2007, the program is expanding to four additional schools with the goal of eventually reaching all 19 U-M schools and colleges.

In minutes, the new matching process takes the data the University already has on its 40,000 students and looks for donor-specified information such as academic achievement, financial status, athletic participation or community service. The staffer gets a list that also tells how many scholarships each student qualifies for, which allows them to distribute the funds more equally. There are more than 100 different donor specifications.

Prior to setting up the new process, the University had to manually keep track of the large number of scholarships, spending the summer months reviewing student applications and donor awards to make a match.

U-M’s College of Engineering alone has restricted scholarship endowments valued at more than $75 million providing more than $3.25 million per year in aid to more than 400 students including 140 unique perpetual scholarships started by private donors?each with their own unique standards.

The oldest College of Engineering award, for example, was established more than 120 years ago and each scholarship uses the terminology of its time. For instance, a scholarship set up in 1916 cites a sound body, sane and capable mind, upright character and habits of economy and temperance as some of its criteria.

Endowments?restricted donations where the donor sets strict criteria allowing a portion of the interest to be invested in goals such as scholarships?total more than $5.7 billion at U-M, including those administered by its schools and colleges.

The latest expansion of the new automated scholarship matching project extends the match process to students enrolled in the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts (U-M’s largest college), Rackham School of Graduate Studies, the Law School and the School of Public Health.

More than two-thirds of U-M students receive financial aid and U-M Provost Teresa Sullivan told U-M Regents June 21 that the large array of financial aid options actually makes U-M more affordable than any other public in-state or Big Ten university. U-M financial aid officials advise students to apply for aid at least once, even if they aren’t sure whether they would qualify, just to see what type of support might be available.

Sullivan has noted U-M directly allocates more than $60 million in institutional financial aid with another $35 million coming from academic units, one of the largest pools of financial aid resources available at any public institution in the nation.

About the technology: The U-M developed-software used an enhancement “bolt-on” with the PeopleSoft Campus Solutions V8 SP1 application using 8.22 PeopleTools. It runs on an Oracle Platform.

For more about MAISApply to U-M or to seek financial aid