Apply Everywhere

Inspiration

We've all suffered when applying to college applications, having to submit our information over and over again for every application website. This is a solution to that problem, allowing an extensible format to submit a college application to any program that accepts it.

What it does

There are two parts to this project:

The standard file format
The browser extension

The file format just contains all the information needed in a college application, while the browser extension integrates existing application websites to use the file format to submit to them.

How we built it

The browser extension is built in javascript, using the webextension api, while the file format was designed around xml

Challenges we ran into

Some college applications (namely, commonapp), are very non-accessible websites. This made it hard to integrate with these websites, but we found a way to do it.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Every small step, from auto-filling fields on a website to getting the first bare-bones plugin working, was an accomplishment. Through these small, easily acheivable goals, we got to a point that seemed unacheivable when we first started.

What we learned

A new programming language: javascript, which is very important in the world of the web. And a slightly older information file format: xml.

What's next for "Apply Everywhere"

Supporting more college application websites, a smoother submission process. Perhaps maybe even work with colleges to accept this file format directly (who knows?)