MyUniversity

MyUniversity (or MyU) is an all-in-one university app built to help students form meaningful connections through its connection matcher and professor, course, event, club, and residence viewers.

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Inspiration

We were inspired by http://botondballo.ca/timetable/, the UofT Timetable as well as LinkedIn. Both these apps help students with their university life, however, they are all seperate websites requiring a different login system for each. The UofT Timetable is also only available for UofT students and not others. LinkedIn's networking services encourage more superficial relationships for employment and do not cater to Gen-Z students. Therefore, we aim to make a centralized hub to help foster connections with others as well as other methods to help one's life at university.

What it does

MyU (MyUniversity) aims to be a centralized hub for all Canadian university students aiming to have a much more fulfilling life in university. This website provides many features to students such as matching with other students with similar interests or the same university, easy lookup for course time tables, rating professors as well as courses, and other features, all streamlined and easy to understand and use rather than having to look over long and unresponsive tabs for one searching for information themselves.

How we built it

Using Google's Gemini AI, Supabase's database, and Vercel, we developed MyU as a full-stack program complete with front-end and back-end services. The front-end incorporates html, css, javascript, and Vercel to display smooth and modern ui's that take information from the back-end. The back-end utilizes node.js, typescript, and Vercel to safely store and use API keys to connect and use Gemini and Supabase.

Challenges we ran into

One big challenge we ran into is needing a back-end to securely store API keys. As we only utilized two keys for the meantime, a full back-end system was not required and we used Vercel serverless functions instead. This was very difficult for us to develop, and took hours of our time to fully integrate into the project.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

As our group's first ever hackathon, with little experience, we were able to connect to API keys and utilized AI and databases for the first time. We also successfully integrated Vercel's serverless functions to serve as our backend to store the API keys, successfully developing a full-stack project.

What we learned

The most important thing we learned was the importance of securely storing API keys in a safe place, which is essential coding practice that must be focused on heavily. We also learned to not solely rely on front-end systems, as a back-end system is required long term for the project to succeed.

What's next for My University

  • Sign up and login for students, fully imagining our product
  • Functionality for the different features besides MyNetwork like messaging, in-message games, rating services, and event postings
  • MyCareer, a premium job board for students wishing to apply for internships, co-ops, and full-time careers
  • Going global
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