CampusCompas

Explore universities worldwide and discover your ideal match with CampusCompass.

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Inspiration

The idea for CampusCompass came from the overwhelming experience of searching for the right university. With so many options, requirements, and personal factors to consider, the process often feels confusing and time-consuming. I wanted to build something that could simplify this journey using the power of AI—something I wish I had when I was making my own education choices.

What it does

CampusCompass is an AI-powered Telegram bot that helps students discover universities that match their academic goals, interests, and preferences. With a single command (/find_uni), users can describe what they're looking for—such as preferred country, field of study, budget, or language—and the bot intelligently suggests suitable university options. It simplifies the search process by interpreting natural language and providing personalized recommendations in seconds.

How I built it

CampusCompass was built as a Telegram bot using Python. Here's how I approached the project:

Bot Logic: I created a structured flow where users can interact with a single command: /find_uni, prompting them for preferences such as country, major, and other key factors. AI Integration: I used Perplexity's API to interpret user input and generate recommendations in natural language. Deployment: The bot was deployed on Render, ensuring it's always online and scalable. Design: I used a pastel-colored, minimal web landing page to make the tool visually appealing and accessible.

Challenges I ran into

It was really comlicated to write a perfect prompt. There are many things to consider in it, including requirments, visas, rankings. It was easier due to my experience in the field but still it was hard to understand what to include in the prompt and what not to include. There are sometimes unique details for specific countries which are hard to notice: like differences between types of universities in countries, differences in duration of studies, different school diplomas etc.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

Personally, I am really proud of the amount of tools I have learnt how to use. In recent months a lot of AI tools have been released and I decided to leverage most of them to build and deploy as quickly as possible (Development of the webpage for example). While this experience was very new and exciting I still enjoyed writing code, designing and filming by myself. This tools gave me power to work alone on everything, and that was really something new.

Besides, I am really proud of the product I have built. I didn't expect that AI could provide that good of an answer to the question about universities. I tested it on my profile and it gave me a better answer than a consultant that I paid 400$ for 😂. So that means that the solution I have built actually brings value to the world.

What I learned

Apart from the amount of tools (as I said in a previous paragraph) I have learnt how to use APIs better and how to work with OpenAI's SDK, which is very useful actually in today's world. And I have never actually built such a large telegram bot before, so that was a new experience for me.

What's next for CampusCompas

Besides making a web version of chat and (possibly) a mobile application. I want to increase the amount of functions. Like searching for requirments or other questions like scholarships and student housing (I have experienced all of this on my own so it will be very cool to build a solution for that.

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