Pathy

Every student deserves someone who has already walked the path.

Inspiration

Picture this: you're 17, the first in your family to apply to university, and every question starts with "Who do I even ask?"

Students whose parents went to university can ask at the dinner table. First-generation students have to work it out alone — across 23 Ontario universities, hundreds of programs and dozens of deadlines. For students with a disability or a language barrier, it's harder still.

We realized the missing piece isn't information. It's people.

Pathy started from one question: what if every student had a mentor who had already been through it?

What it does

Pathy is a mentor-first platform. It connects high-school students — especially first-generation students — with current university students, while Pat the fox guides them along the way.

Find a Mentor (SmartMatch AI)

Students describe themselves in their own words: "first-gen, curious about engineering at Waterloo, nervous about moving away." SmartMatch returns their top mentors, each with a match score, a plain-language "Why we matched you", and conversation starters so the first message isn't scary.

Explore

An interactive map of all 23 Ontario universities. Pat travels between campuses and draws your path as he goes. Every school has photos, key facts, what it's known for, and the programs it's genuinely strong in.

Passport

A digital passport book. Answer a short reflection — "What stood out to you?" — and Pat stamps your passport with that university's crest and colours.

My Applications

A checklist tied to researched official deadlines, so students never have to guess dates. You can only choose programs the university actually offers.

Community Forum

A place for students to ask questions and support each other.

Accessibility, built in

One button on every page offers read-aloud, click-to-hear, adjustable reading speed, voice typing, text size from 85% to 150%, light/dark mode, high contrast, an easy-read font, a colour-blind-friendly mode, reduced motion, a reading guide, focus mode and larger buttons. Settings follow you to every page and save to your account.

How we built it

Frontend — React 19, TypeScript, TanStack Start, Tailwind CSS and shadcn/ui, with Leaflet and OpenStreetMap for the map and Embla for the photo carousels.

Backend — Lovable Cloud (PostgreSQL) with secure accounts and row-level security, so each student only ever sees their own data.

SmartMatch: AI plus clear rules

A language model reads the student's request and pulls out the universities, programs, topics and languages they mention.
Text embeddings compare the meaning of the request with each mentor's profile, so matches aren't limited to exact keywords.
A weighted scoring system ranks mentors on meaning (35%), university (25%), program (20%), language (10%) and topics (10%), and drops mentors who don't speak a language the student requires.
A second AI call writes match reasons and conversation starters using only facts from the mentor's profile.
If the AI service is unavailable, matching falls back to keywords, so students always get results.

Accessibility — designed with Ontario's Accessible Commerce for Ontarians with Disabilities Act and its Integrated Accessibility Standards Regulation in mind, using the browser's built-in speech tools for read-aloud and voice typing.

Data — university profiles, programs and deadlines researched from official sources. Campus photos from Wikimedia Commons, credited.

Testing — automated tests (Vitest) covering the matching weights, accessibility limits, deadlines and program checks.

Challenges we ran into

Making the AI trustworthy. Pure AI ranking is a black box, and AI-written reasons can invent things. We combined AI with fixed, explainable weights and restricted reasons to facts already in each mentor's profile.
Accessibility without losing the design. Stacking more than ten accessibility modes on a playful, illustrated site meant carefully tuning text scaling, dark mode and contrast so nothing broke.
Accurate data. Verifying programs and deadlines for 23 universities took real research — and we chose to leave a date blank rather than guess it.
A map that feels alive. Getting Pat to glide smoothly between campuses while drawing a curved path took several attempts.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

SmartMatch turns a request written in plain language into an explained top-3 in seconds.
More than ten accessibility features on every page, saved to the student's account.
Full coverage of all 23 Ontario universities with researched profiles, programs and deadlines.
A complete student journey: find a mentor, explore campuses, collect stamps, track applications, join the community.
Honest by design. Example mentors are clearly labelled, and no fake success messages are shown.

What we learned

Explainable AI builds trust. Students care as much about why a mentor matches as who it is.
Accessibility is good design for everyone. Dark mode and read-aloud help all users, not only those who need them.
AI plus simple rules beats either one alone.
Small, friendly moments — Pat's stamps, two-tap reflections — make a stressful process feel welcoming.

What's next for Pathy

Real verified mentors — university student sign-ups with verification, so SmartMatch matches students with real people.
In-app messaging — safe, moderated conversations between students and mentors.
Full translation — the whole site in multiple languages, so newcomer families can take part too.
School partnerships — working with guidance counsellors and school boards to reach first-gen students early.
Beyond Ontario — the shared university catalogue makes adding new provinces and colleges straightforward.
Smarter insights — using mentor feedback to improve matches and to spot what first-gen students worry about most. ```