Counselor.AI

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Mobile version of Counslor.AI

Inspiration

For countless students around the world, successfully maneuvering through the college application process and all the essential writing that goes into it is a daunting challenge. From young high school students aspiring to attend their dream colleges to seasoned college seniors eager to pursue graduate studies, the struggle to showcase their unique profiles to their fullest merit within a limited set of characters on the college application portals can be incredibly frustrating; even more so when you do not have access to proper quality personalized guidance. As three college students in our final year, we're about to embark on our own graduate school application phase. We know firsthand the challenges of crafting a compelling application that showcases all our unique strengths and experiences. The lack of quality personalized guidance and the prevalence of questionable paid services inspired us to create Counselor.AI – an AI-powered web app that provides the mentorship students need to succeed.

What it does

Counselor.AI is an AI-powered web application that acts as a personalized college admissions mentor, guiding students through every step of the application process. By leveraging the power of the Gemini AI API, Counselor.AI provides personalized recommendations and feedback on essays, helping students craft a compelling narrative that showcases their strengths and experiences. The AI counselor is trained to think and respond like a world-class admissions expert, providing the same level of support and insight as a top-tier human mentor, accessible 24/7.

How we built it

To bring Counselor.AI to life, we leveraged cutting-edge technologies:

React for a dynamic and responsive user interface
Tailwind for rapid styling and prototyping
Firebase for authentication, storage, and database management
Gemini AI API to power our AI counselor

We began by creating a comprehensive manuscript outlining the desired traits and behaviors of our AI, which we set as the system instruction. Through extensive testing and refinement, we crafted prompts for each feature, ensuring the AI provided the desired guidance.

Challenges we ran into

One significant challenge was the lack of support for uploading and extracting content from document files in the Gemini Public API. We overcame this by implementing a PDF-to-text extractor library, allowing us to extract relevant text from user-uploaded files and use it as context for the AI's responses.

Another challenge was ensuring the Gemini API's responses were formatted clearly and concisely for our users. We experimented with different formatting techniques until we found the right balance between plain text and structured JSON data.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Despite the challenges, developing Counselor.AI was an incredibly rewarding experience. By pushing ourselves to think creatively and overcome obstacles, we created a powerful tool for students and grew as developers. We're proud of creating an AI-powered platform that provides personalized guidance and support to students throughout the college application process, making high-quality mentorship accessible to all.

What we learned

Throughout the development of Counselor.AI, we learned the art of effective prompting and prompt handling when working with AI. We spent countless hours refining our prompts to ensure that our AI counselor could provide personalized, relevant, and actionable guidance. We also gained valuable experience in integrating technologies like React, Tailwind, and Firebase to create a powerful platform.

Another key lesson was the importance of understanding the college admissions process. By delving into the strategies of expert counselors, we created an AI that can provide the same level of support as a human mentor, accessible 24/7.

What's next for Counselor.AI

Although Counselor.AI in its current form works great, it is still just a prototype. We wish to develop it further and bring it to the market soon enough so that all students who are in dire need of such personally catered support can access it in their own application journey along with us. Our goal is to refine the platform, expand its features, and create a robust, user-friendly tool that can help students worldwide navigate the complex college application process with confidence and ease. As we embark on our own graduate school applications, we are excited to use Counselor.AI ourselves and gather valuable insights to make the platform even better. We believe that every student deserves access to high-quality mentorship, and we are committed to making that a reality through Counselor.AI.