Scholarships, Competitions & Internships Extractor

A production-ready Apify Actor that automatically extracts structured information from RSS feeds about scholarships, competitions, internships, and challenges across 11 different categories.

🎯 What This Actor Does

This Actor reads RSS feeds from Givemechallenge.com and extracts:

• Title - Challenge/competition name
• Description - Cleaned and summarized description
• Deadline - Application deadline (normalized to YYYY-MM-DD format)
• Awards - Prize money, grants, or scholarships
• Challenge Link - Direct link to apply/participate
• Category - The category of the challenge

📋 Supported Categories

• App Challenge
• Design Challenge
• Fellowships
• Ideation Challenge
• Internships
• Music and Art Challenge
• Photography Challenge
• Poetry Competition
• Scholarships
• Video Challenge
• Writing Challenge

🚀 Quick Start

Using Apify Console

1. Go to Apify Console
2. Search for saadithya/scholarships-competitions-internships-extractor
3. Click "Run"
4. Configure input:

{
  "category": "Scholarships",
  "maxItems": 20
}

5. Click "Start"

Using Apify API

curl -X POST \
  https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/saadithya~scholarships-competitions-internships-extractor/runs \
  -H 'Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_TOKEN' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{
    "category": "Internships",
    "maxItems": 20
  }'

Using Node.js Apify Client

const { ApifyClient } = require('apify-client');

const client = new ApifyClient({
  token: 'YOUR_API_TOKEN',
});

const runInput = {
  category: 'Scholarships',
  maxItems: 10,
};

const run = await client.actor('saadithya~scholarships-competitions-internships-extractor').call(runInput);

// Get results
const items = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(`Found ${items.count} items`);
items.items.forEach(item => {
  console.log(`${item.title} - Deadline: ${item.deadline}, Awards: ${item.awards}`);
});

Using Python Apify Client

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient(token='YOUR_API_TOKEN')

run_input = {
    "category": "Ideation Challenge",
    "maxItems": 20
}

run = client.actor("saadithya~scholarships-competitions-internships-extractor").call(run_input)

for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).list_items().items:
    print(f"{item.title} - Deadline: {item.deadline}, Awards: {item.awards}")

📥 Input Parameters

category (Required)

Type: String (enum dropdown)
Description: Select the category of challenges to extract

Options:

• App Challenge
• Design Challenge
• Fellowships
• Ideation Challenge
• Internships
• Music and Art Challenge
• Photography Challenge
• Poetry Competition
• Scholarships
• Video Challenge
• Writing Challenge

deadlineAfter (Optional)

Type: String (YYYY-MM-DD format)
Default: Not set
Description: Only return challenges with deadlines AFTER this date

Example:

{
  "category": "Scholarships",
  "deadlineAfter": "2026-06-01"
}

maxItems (Optional)

Type: Integer
Default: 20
Range: 1-100
Description: Maximum number of results to return

Example:

{
  "category": "Internships",
  "maxItems": 50
}

testMode (Optional)

Type: Boolean
Default: false
Description: If enabled, returns a mock item for testing purposes

Example:

{
  "category": "App Challenge",
  "testMode": true
}

📤 Output Format

Each extracted item is pushed to the Apify dataset with this structure:

{
  "title": "Mastercard Foundation and ASU Graduate Scholarships for Africans",
  "description": "Are you an African student looking to pursue a graduate degree? The Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program at Arizona State University provides comprehensive support...",
  "deadline": "2026-05-15",
  "awards": "$869,000",
  "challengeLink": "https://www.mastercardfdn.org/scholarships/",
  "category": "Scholarships"
}

💡 Usage Examples

Example 1: Find Upcoming Scholarship Deadlines

{
  "category": "Scholarships",
  "deadlineAfter": "2026-06-01",
  "maxItems": 50
}

Example 2: Get All Available Internships

{
  "category": "Internships",
  "maxItems": 100
}

Example 3: Test the Actor

{
  "category": "App Challenge",
  "testMode": true
}

Example 4: Extract Latest Design Challenges

{
  "category": "Design Challenge",
  "maxItems": 10
}

🔧 Technical Details

How It Works

1. RSS Feed Fetching: Uses the rss-parser library to fetch and parse RSS feeds from Feedburner URLs
2. Data Extraction:
   • Deadline: Searches for patterns like "Deadline:- DD-MM-YYYY", "Deadline: March 15, 2026"
   • Awards: Extracts from "Awards:- $X,XXX" or similar patterns
   • Challenge Link: Finds anchor tags with "Take this challenge", "Apply Now", etc.
3. Data Cleaning: Removes HTML tags, normalizes whitespace, truncates long descriptions
4. Filtering: Applies deadline and maxItems filters
5. Output: Pushes structured data to Apify dataset

Date Normalization

The Actor handles multiple date formats:

• DD-MM-YYYY (e.g., 09-04-2026 → 2026-04-09)
• MM-DD-YYYY (e.g., 04-09-2026 → 2026-04-09)
• Text formats (e.g., March 15, 2026 → 2026-03-15)
• ISO formats (e.g., 2026-03-15 → 2026-03-15)

All dates are normalized to YYYY-MM-DD format.

Error Handling

• RSS Parse Failures: Logs warnings and continues with empty results
• Item Processing Errors: Skips problematic items without crashing
• Missing Fields: Uses fallback values ("Not specified")
• Invalid Input: Validates input and exits gracefully

⚙️ Configuration

Timeout

Default: 300 seconds (5 minutes)
Recommended: Keep as is for most use cases

Memory

Default: 1024 MB
Recommended: Increase to 2048 MB if processing >100 items

📊 Result Formats

Results can be downloaded in multiple formats from Apify Console:

• JSON
• JSONL
• CSV
• Excel (XLSX)
• XML
• HTML

🔍 Troubleshooting

No Results Returned

• Verify the RSS feed is accessible
• Check if category is correctly selected
• Try increasing maxItems
• Test with testMode: true first

Missing Deadlines or Awards

• Not all RSS items contain this information
• The Actor extracts when available in the content
• Check the raw RSS content to verify data exists

Build Fails

• Ensure all dependencies are in package.json
• Verify Node.js version compatibility
• Review build logs in Apify Console

Timeout Issues

• Increase timeout in Actor settings (max 900 seconds)
• Reduce maxItems parameter
• Check network connectivity to RSS feeds

🌟 Use Cases

1. Job Boards: Automatically aggregate internship opportunities
2. Educational Platforms: Track scholarship deadlines for students
3. Innovation Hubs: Monitor competition landscapes
4. Career Services: Provide students with latest opportunities
5. Research Institutions: Track fellowship opportunities
6. Media Outlets: Curate challenge listings for audiences

📈 Scheduling

Set up automated runs in Apify Console:

1. Go to Actor page → "Schedules" tab
2. Click "Create schedule"
3. Set frequency (daily, weekly, etc.)
4. Configure input parameters
5. Save and activate

🔔 Webhooks

Configure webhooks to get notified when runs complete:

1. Go to Actor page → "Webhooks" tab
2. Click "Add webhook"
3. Configure:
   • Event types: ACTOR.RUN.SUCCEEDED, ACTOR.RUN.FAILED
   • Request URL: Your endpoint
   • Payload template: Custom JSON

📝 Version History

v1.0.0

• Initial release
• Support for 11 challenge categories
• Advanced deadline and awards extraction
• HTML cleaning and text normalization
• Comprehensive error handling

🤝 Support

• Documentation: Apify Docs
• Community: Apify Forum
• Issues: Report via Apify Console
• API Reference: Apify API Docs

📄 License

ISC

👨‍💻 Author

saadithya

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Ready to extract opportunities? Start using the Scholarships, Competitions & Internships Extractor now! 🚀

For questions or custom features, reach out via Apify Console.