PathPilot

Inspiration As university students ourselves, we've experienced firsthand the overwhelming challenge of navigating academic requirements, choosing the right career path, and understanding how our coursework translates into real-world opportunities. Students often feel lost in a sea of course codes, prerequisites, and career possibilities. We created PathPilot to be the compass that guides students through their academic journey—transforming raw transcript data into actionable insights about careers, connections, and projects that align with their unique academic profile.

What it does PathPilot is an intelligent academic planning platform that turns your university transcript into a personalized career roadmap. Here's how it works:

Smart Transcript Parsing: Upload your PDF transcript and our AI-powered parser extracts your courses, grades, and program details automatically AI Career Recommendations: Using Google's Gemini 2.0 Flash, PathPilot analyzes your academic history and recommends 3 tailored career paths with confidence scores and detailed reasoning Interactive Course Visualization: View your entire program as an interactive graph showing course dependencies, prerequisites, and your progress across all four years LinkedIn Job Matching: Get real-time job postings from LinkedIn that match your selected career path and location Professor Connections: Discover top-rated professors in your field using RateMyProfessor data to help you build valuable academic relationships Project Recommendations: Receive 3 curated project ideas aligned with your career path to build your portfolio Accessibility First: Full support for high contrast mode and reduced motion for users with visual impairments or motion sensitivity How we built it Frontend:

React 19 with Vite for blazing-fast development Framer Motion for smooth, professional animations ReactFlow for interactive course dependency graphs Context API for global state management Custom accessibility system supporting WCAG compliance Backend:

FastAPI (Python) with MVC architecture PDF parsing using PyPDF2 and pdfplumber Google Gemini 2.0 Flash API for AI-powered career analysis and recommendations RapidAPI integration for LinkedIn job search GraphQL queries for RateMyProfessor data with curl fallback Environment-based configuration with python-dotenv AI & Data Integration:

Gemini AI for intelligent career matching based on course history Ontario Tech CS course catalog with 100+ courses mapped with prerequisites Real-time LinkedIn job API integration RateMyProfessor academic database Challenges we ran into API Quota Management: We hit rate limits on the LinkedIn API multiple times and had to swap API keys mid-development. We learned to implement robust error handling and graceful degradation.

Cross-Platform Compatibility: Our initial implementation used curl via subprocess for API calls, which failed on Windows. We refactored to use the requests library for cross-platform reliability.

Career Path Matching: Getting project recommendations to correctly match different career path variations (e.g., "Software Engineer" vs "Software Engineering") required implementing fuzzy matching logic with comprehensive career mappings.

PDF Parsing Accuracy: University transcripts vary wildly in format. We had to build a robust parser that could handle different layouts, fonts, and data structures.

Accessibility Integration: Implementing accessibility wasn't just about adding toggles—we had to refactor every component to conditionally render based on highContrast and reduceMotion settings while maintaining smooth UX.

State Management: Coordinating data flow between transcript upload, AI analysis, career selection, and recommendation pages required careful planning of our Context API structure.

Accomplishments that we're proud of Full-Stack AI Integration: Successfully integrated Gemini 2.0 Flash to provide genuinely useful, personalized career recommendations based on academic data Beautiful, Accessible UI: Created a professional interface with smooth animations that also fully supports accessibility needs Real-Time Job Data: Connected to LinkedIn's live job API to provide current, relevant opportunities Complete Academic Planning: Built an interactive course graph with 100+ courses, prerequisites, and multi-year planning Rapid Development: Built the entire platform during the hackathon with working transcript parsing, AI recommendations, and multiple external API integrations Production-Ready Architecture: Implemented clean MVC patterns, error handling, and environment configuration that could scale to production What we learned AI Integration: How to craft effective prompts for Gemini AI to analyze structured academic data and generate career insights API Orchestration: Managing multiple external APIs (RapidAPI, Gemini, RateMyProfessor) with different authentication methods and rate limits Accessibility Best Practices: WCAG compliance isn't just about contrast ratios—it's about motion sensitivity, keyboard navigation, and thoughtful UX PDF Data Extraction: The challenges of parsing unstructured documents and building robust pattern matching React Performance: Using Framer Motion efficiently, managing re-renders with Context API, and optimizing animations Full-Stack Deployment: Coordinating frontend-backend communication, CORS configuration, and environment variables What's next for PathPilot Multi-University Support: Expand beyond Ontario Tech to support transcripts and course catalogs from universities across Canada and the US Semester Planning Tool: Add a drag-and-drop interface to plan future semesters based on prerequisites and course availability GPA & Scholarship Predictor: Use AI to predict academic outcomes and match students with relevant scholarships Networking Features: Connect students with alumni who followed similar career paths Mobile App: Build native iOS/Android apps for on-the-go academic planning Advanced Analytics: Track progress toward graduation requirements, suggest optimal course sequences, and identify potential delays Integration with Learning Management Systems: Automatically sync with Canvas, Blackboard, or Moodle to pull real-time grades Career Outcome Data: Partner with universities to show where graduates with similar paths ended up working PathPilot transforms the complex maze of academic planning into a clear, personalized roadmap—empowering students to make informed decisions about their education and future careers.