CampusMate: Enhancing Student Career Readiness

Many students miss key events and feel lost about careers. CampusMate connects them with alumni and shows personalized events, making career paths clear and actions easy—all in one app.

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Inspiration

As students ourselves, we’ve often felt overwhelmed when it comes to career planning. Even with dozens of emails, campus portals, and events, we realized we were still missing the real-world insight—what is it actually like to work in a particular role or company? That kind of knowledge only comes from talking to people who’ve been there who are our alumni. This, combined with poor visibility of career events on campus, inspired us to build a solution that bridges this gap.

What it does

Our app connects students with alumni based on shared interests and backgrounds, giving them real, first-hand insight into jobs and internships. It also highlights personalized campus events and workshops on the homepage to help students engage with professional development opportunities more easily. Push notifications ensure they never miss key sessions, and smart suggestions help them grow their network and career knowledge. What we learned Through this project, we learned how deeply students crave authentic guidance, not just job listings. We also saw the power of simplified UI/UX in boosting student engagement, and how even simple features like smart notifications and alumni matching can make a real difference.

How we built it

We created the frontend using Figma to design the app interface and user flow. We designed a homepage that shows real-time campus events and a recommendation engine that matches students with alumni based on their goals and background. We also used Canva to design our presentation slides and visuals.

Challenges we ran into

One of the biggest challenges we faced was narrowing down our ideas to focus on features that would have the most impact in a short time. We wanted the app to serve students at all levels—freshmen, sophomores, and seniors—but designing a user experience that speaks to all of them was difficult. Another challenge was creating a clear, engaging interface that makes event discovery and networking feel intuitive and valuable. We also had to think carefully about how to present complex features like mentor matching and career suggestions in a simple, student-friendly way.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We’re proud of how quickly we were able to turn our idea into a tangible prototype that effectively addresses key student pain points. The app's clean, intuitive design makes it easy for students to discover relevant events and connect with mentors, and the personalized notifications ensure they stay on track with their career goals. We also developed a system that balances simplicity with powerful features, like AI-driven mentor suggestions and event visibility. Despite time constraints, we were able to create a user-centered solution that resonates with both students and potential institutional partners.

What we learned

Through this project, we learned how deeply students crave authentic guidance, not just job listings. We also saw the power of simplified UI/UX in boosting student engagement, and how even simple features like smart notifications and alumni matching can make a real difference.

What's next for CampusMate: Enhancing Student Career Readiness

At the CUNY level, we plan to expand our platform to connect students not only with alumni but also with industry professionals, widening access to real-world career insights. To protect user privacy, we’ll implement secure, end-to-end encrypted messaging for mentor-student interactions. An offline mode will allow students to access their saved lists and profiles without internet, and gamification elements—such as badges for networking milestones—will boost long-term engagement. We'll also enhance our mentor matching system with AI to provide more accurate, personalized connections. From an institutional perspective, we aim to build a comprehensive data dashboard that tracks student skill development as a percentage of their career goals. This will include features like a coursework tab, portfolio uploads with AI-generated career suggestions, and smart resume feedback to support student growth and help advisors better guide them on their career path.

Built With

  • canva
  • figma
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