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Methodology

We check three things before we recommend anything.

Is it current? Does it fit this student? Will it actually help the family bill? If we cannot answer, we say so.

Hundreds of school aid pages and scholarship documents funneling down into a single clean, ranked playbook card.
Hundreds of policy pages in. One ranked, source-checked plan out.

Published school sources come first. AI helps us search, but it does not get the final say. When a rule is unclear, the playbook gives you the exact question to ask the aid office.

For the full verification system with live counts, see How we verify.

See the full research method

Every recommendation answers three questions.

Before an award, school move, or deadline reaches your playbook, it has to clear three checks. Anything that can’t answer all three gets labeled or left out.

  1. Is it real and current?

    We check the school’s own aid pages and scholarship rules before recommending anything.

  2. Does it apply to this student?

    We match it against your student’s GPA, scores, major, activities, state, family situation, and actual college list.

  3. Does it actually lower the bill?

    We check the fine print, including combining caps, whether outside awards cut your aid, and the GPA you have to keep so the money doesn’t disappear sophomore year.

A student walking up a staircase of gold steps where one step is cracked and crumbling away, representing a scholarship that fails its renewal rule.
A scholarship that vanishes sophomore year was never worth its headline number. We check the renewal rule, not just the award amount.

Official sources come first.

AI helps us search fast, but it doesn’t get the final say. We trust evidence from the top down. The school’s own words first, AI summaries never on their own.

A gold pyramid of five tiers representing the order MeritPlaybook trusts evidence in, official school sources at the top.
The order we trust evidence in, from top to bottom.

  1. The school’s own financial aid pages

    Its published aid rules, eligibility tables, and award descriptions.

  2. Scholarship, department, and honors pages

    Award rules and conditions published by the program itself.

  3. The official stats colleges publish each year

    Common Data Set filings. These are the standard numbers on aid, merit awards, and admitted-student profiles.

  4. State and federal aid sources

    Published rules from state grant agencies and federal aid programs.

  5. Scholarship provider pages

    Sponsors, foundations, and employers that publish their own award rules.

  6. Credible secondary sources

    Reputable reporting that points back to official sources.

  7. AI summaries, never on their own

    They help us search and compare. A recommendation never ships on an AI summary alone.

We do not treat every finding the same.

Some rules are clearly published. Some are buried in PDFs. Some vary by student situation. Some are not public at all. The playbook labels that difference instead of pretending every answer is equally certain.

  • Policy verified. Supported by an official or highly reliable source.
  • Needs confirmation. The evidence points in one direction, but the policy is unclear, missing, old, or situation-dependent. The playbook gives you the exact question to ask the aid office before a high-stakes decision.
  • Conflicting info. Sources disagree. The playbook shows the conflict instead of smoothing it over.

Separately from evidence, every award carries an action call: Apply, Verify eligibility, or Skip. This keeps effort on the awards that actually move the final bill.

Conflicting information gets slowed down, not smoothed over.

If sources disagree, the playbook does not bury the conflict. It marks the item for review, explains the issue in plain English, and tells the family what to verify before spending time on the award.

When a policy is unclear, a confident-sounding answer is worse than no answer. MeritPlaybook labels uncertainty because families deserve to know what is known, what is likely, and what still needs confirmation.

What AI does and does not do.

We run multiple research passes to search broadly and catch details a single search misses. But AI summaries are never the final word. Every recommendation is grounded in published school policy wherever possible.

AI helps with

  • Finding policy pages and scholarship requirements.
  • Comparing information across sources.
  • Spotting deadlines, renewal rules, and eligibility conditions.
  • Turning dense policy language into plain English.

AI does not get to

  • Invent missing policies.
  • Treat an old source as current.
  • Pretend unclear rules are certain.
  • Guarantee aid, admission, or scholarship outcomes.

What MeritPlaybook cannot promise.

Colleges can change policies, scholarship committees can make judgment calls, and final aid decisions depend on the student’s full application. MeritPlaybook does not guarantee aid. It gives families a clearer, faster, source-backed plan for what to pursue, what to verify, and what to skip.

What we refuse to do.

  • We do not sell student profiles to colleges or advertisers.
  • We do not guarantee aid or admission.
  • We do not pretend unclear policies are certain.
  • We do not recommend awards just because they appear in a database.
  • We do not publish average-savings claims without real outcome data.
  • We do not claim financial-aid credentials we do not have.

Get a playbook built around your student, your schools, and your final bill.

Know what to pursue, what to verify, and what to skip before your student spends the time.

Get your custom playbook, or see the sample.