How to Build a Scholarship Research MCP Server with Node.js, Express, and MongoDB
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Scholarship hunting is a research job, not a single search box. You filter awards by field, GPA, citizenship, and deadline. You keep a shortlist. You write notes about essays and recommenders. Then you come back a week later and try to remember why you saved a particular program. An AI assistant can help with that workflow, but only if it can query a real catalog and persist what you already decided. Chat history isn't a database. A hallucinated deadline is worse than no deadline at all. The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is the standard way to give AI apps that kind of access. In this tutorial, you'll build a scholarship research MCP server with Node.js, Express, and MongoDB. When you finish, Cursor, Claude Desktop, or any other MCP host will be able to search awards, match them to a student profile, bookmark a shortlist, and store research notes. The model stays the reasoning layer while your server owns the data. You'll build: A MongoDB catalog of scholarships, plus saved-list and notes collections Nine MCP tools for search, matching, deadlines, comparison, and research tracking Resources so a client can read the catalog without calling a tool Prompts that turn a student profile into a research plan An Express app that serves MCP over Streamable HTTP The sample catalog in this project is a teaching dataset. Amounts, dates, and eligibility rules are simplified. Always confirm details on the official application page before applying. What You Need You should be comfortable with JavaScript and basic Express routing. You don't need prior MCP experience. Install: Node.js 20 or later MongoDB running locally, or a free MongoDB Atlas cluster An MCP client if you want to try the last section. Cursor and Claude Desktop both work. Docker is enough for MongoDB: docker run -d --name mongo -p 27017:27017 mongo:7 Table of Contents What You Need What Is the Model Context Protocol? Why a Scholarship Research Server? How the Architecture Fits Together How to Set Up the Project How t