It does actually have a discrete graphics card. NVIDIA GeForce MX250, with 2GB of GDDR5. The Linux version at https://www.vmall.com/product/... has this configuration, or on https://www.vmall.com/product/... you can choose to have the discrete graphics card by clicking the second option on the 3rd row (below the color and CPU/RAM options).

In fact, our public clusters run a customized version of Ubuntu called Debathena: http://debathena.mit.edu/

Like the OP, I'm a prospective college student looking for FOSS scholarships. The difference is that I've already released my code, see http://wubi-installer.org/ (collaborative effort, 500,000+ downloads), and http://lubi.sourceforge.net/ (individual effort, 100,000+ downloads). As for revision control, see http://code.launchpad.net/~gezakovacs/ (mostly shellscript+NSIS, but I've recently begun using Qt4 and C++).

So back on topic, what are the best sources for FOSS scholarships?