Medicine Hat teen's free scholarship website draws 25,000 visits provincewide
Grade 12 student Ilia Ivanov built ScholarAB to let Alberta students search thousands of scholarships without creating an account.
Why it matters
The free tool removes common barriers, like mandatory account creation, for Alberta students searching for post-secondary funding.
Ilia Ivanov, a Grade 12 student at Medicine Hat High School, launched the free website ScholarAB in March 2026 after struggling to find a single easy-to-search resource for scholarship funding. The site now lists about 2,500 scholarships worth roughly $7 million across 270 programs, with about $3.3 million currently available, including 23 scholarships specific to Medicine Hat.
Users can search listings by city, award amount and deadline, and save opportunities directly in their browser without creating an account or sharing personal information. Students can optionally provide an email to get reminders 30, 14 and three days before application deadlines.
The site gained a surge of attention after Premier Danielle Smith shared it, drawing more than 10,000 visits in two days. Since mid-September, ScholarAB has recorded over 25,000 visits and 65,000 page views from across Canada, with monthly scholarship application clicks rising from 106 in July to 2,306 in October.
Ivanov, who built and maintains the site independently using self-taught technical skills, runs weekly checks to update or remove outdated listings. He is applying to the University of Alberta and the University of Calgary and plans to keep improving the platform and expanding its reach among Alberta high schools before considering further growth.
Compiled by the Alberta Daily Desk — an AI-written summary of reporting from the credited sources below, produced and reviewed under our editorial policy.