OpportuneAI

Inspiration

Scholarships are meant to create opportunities, yet millions of dollars go unclaimed every year. The barrier is not student potential, but the time-consuming and discouraging process of finding reliable results.

With OpportuneAI, we make scholarship searching simple, accessible, and personal for every student.

What It Does

OpportuneAI is a personalized scholarship search platform that connects students with opportunities to empower their future. Through a short questionnaire on academics and personal background, the platform instantly delivers scholarships that match each student’s profile.

The platform also offers:

Omnia, an AI assistant that guides students through FAQs, navigation, and scholarship resources
A calendar feature to save deadlines directly to personal calendars with one click
A Spanish translation option to make the platform accessible to more students

How We Built It

We developed OpportuneAI with React and TypeScript for the frontend, and FastAPI with Python for the backend. To power intelligent matches and conversational support, we integrated the Google Gemini API, which drives both scholarship recommendations and Omnia’s AI-powered responses.

Challenges We Ran Into

One of our biggest challenges was creating a matching system that felt both accurate and personal. With limited time, we had to carefully balance inclusivity with technical precision, testing multiple approaches to ensure students receive results they could trust.

Accomplishments That We're Proud Of

We created a working platform that genuinely makes scholarship searching simpler and more effective. We’re proud of how we blended empathy with technical design, delivering a tool that students can trust to guide them toward opportunities that fit their unique backgrounds.

What We Learned

We learned how to integrate generative AI into a practical solution, combining it with structured inputs to provide real value. Our team also gained experience in bridging accessibility features, conversational AI design, and backend infrastructure under tight deadlines. Most importantly, we came from different technical backgrounds, and by leveraging our diverse skills we were able to identify a real business problem and build a solution that addressed it effectively.

What's Next for OpportuneAI

Looking ahead, we plan to:

Add user profiles and authentication so students can save scholarships, return later, and receive reminders when deadlines are approaching
Explore additional APIs to pull in more scholarship results and make the platform even more comprehensive
Enhance Omnia with more interactive capabilities, including voice support and expanded knowledge
Introduce a student dashboard that shows saved scholarships, upcoming deadlines, and application progress at a glance
Explore partnerships with universities, nonprofits, and scholarship providers to maximize impact