Inspiration
Not too much inspiration here! The prompt was pretty basic and straightforward -- A Major GPA Calculator! There were more features we were planning on, like multiple-school transcript compatibility, but we ran a bit short on time.
What it does
Self-explanatory. Calculates your major GPA only!
How we built it
This was built as a web app, using the basic HTML, CSS, React stack for the frontend. For the backend, we used Express.js and Node.js.
Challenges we ran into
Originally, we were planning on using an OCR to read our pdf without needing to manually extract the data. However, OCR data is unusable at best! The way it wanted to read the document was insanely jumbled up and could not be parsed into a useable program.
Our next step was extracting test directly from the pdf. We thought it would work better. It did, until we discovered most transcripts are encrypted by default, so they couldn't be extracted. Bummer, right? We spent time looking for ways to decrypt the documents and settled on a built-in JavaScript library that happened to bypass all the encryption.
What we learned
We mostly learned about how pdf's work and how data can be manipulated after extraction. We had a couple people new to using team-based git, so some knowledge of git was gained. Data parsing was an important lesson in actually displaying the correct data!
What's next for Major GPA Calculator
If we were to continue, our first feature would probably be multi-transcript compatibility. I'm sure more users would want their GPA calculated than just John Jay students! A better UI and some bugfixes would also be on the list of improvements for us.
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