GenPathway

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  App.jsx(1)

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  App.jsx(2)

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  fetchCollege.js

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  LandingPage.jsx

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  Dashboard.jsx(1)

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  Dashboard.jsx(2)

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  Dashboard.jsx(3)

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  Dashboard.jsx(4)

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  Dashboard.jsx(5)

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  Search.jsx(1)

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  Search.jsx(2)

Inspiration

Our inspirations for GenPathway came through personal experiences with our own team. One of our teammates, a first-gen high school student, faced significant issues when applying for colleges. Lacking good resources and guidance, they struggled through the complex process of the college application. This firsthand struggle highlights an even broader issue which many students from underrepresented backgrounds had endured in their pursuit of higher education.

What it does

It allows low-income, first-generation students to connect with their perfect colleges. Our web app includes filter-based college search, blog posts giving detailed information about college lifestyles, and, most importantly, 1-1 chats with college representatives. We believe that everyone, despite financial status, should have a fair hand in getting a higher education. As of this reason, GenPathways was built. So, help us build a pathway to a brighter future.

How we built it

We built this project is Visual Studio Code and utilized React.js, Material UI, and Firebase. We used the CollegeScorecard API to fetch detailed information about all colleges across the US.

Challenges we ran into

There were several challenges we faced:

1. Material UI gave us the code for components but they did not directly go with our project. It always messed up the layout of our page. So, we simply looked at the classes they offered and used them to make the UI look nice and responsive.
2. We have pages in our website that the user should not be able to access before logging in. We used the react-router-dom but it didn't seem to work. Anyone could to go to any page. After a lot of googling, we finally used ternary operators and Navigate to fix the issue.
3. We also had some issues accessing info from the API but we fixed it eventually.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of learning a new techonology (React.js) and putting it to such a good use.

What we learned

We learned about different hooks such as useState, useEffect, using .jsx file extension instead of .js which lets us write javscript and HTML in the same file, props and components, navigating to different pages and submitting forms without refreshing the page, and user authentication with firebase.

What's next for GenPathway

It could be released for some students to try out and see if it helps them out.

Built With

• firebase
• react