SOAR: Scholarships Made Easy

SOAR Sign-In Page, providing privacy & security to our users.
SOAR Scholarship Dashboard, tracking users progress and managing scholarship applications.
SOAR AI Chatbot, upon entering the web-app
SOAR AI Chatbot, giving users personalized recommendations on scholarships and financial opportunities.

Inspiration

Imagine a world where every student, no matter their background, has the chance to shine. We were inspired by ScholarshipOwl’s innovative way of simplifying scholarships, but we saw a chance to push it even further...We’re diving deeper to focus on first-generation, low-income (FGLI) students—those who face the toughest challenges and EMPOWERING them to achieve their full potential.

What it does

S.O.A.R. (Scholarships, Opportunities, Aid, Resources) is not just an app—it's a lifeline for FGLI students striving for higher education despite financial hurdles. Our platform transforms the scholarship search into a seamless experience with the help of an AI assistant and Dashboard, turning dreams into reality, one scholarship at a time.

How we built it

AI Chatbot Development: We utilized Landbot to integrate research, scholarship information, and instructions into our AI Chatbot. This chatbot is designed to provide real-time, personalized support.

Web-App Integration: We integrated the AI Chatbot with Glide to create a full-featured web application. Glide allows us to provide users with of a professional interface and dashboard that manages and organizes scholarship information.

Challenges we ran into

Establishing a Clear Direction: During the initial stages, we were spending hours stuck and unsure how our research and app features would come together. We ended up doing a 180 degrees for our app's intentions from Mental Health to Financial Opportunities midway through!

Chatbot Launch: Refining our first AI chatbot with Landbot was tough. We faced many issues with instructions and hallucinations, requiring a lot of patience and hard work. But we overcame these challenges and succeeded in launching a functional, supportive chatbot.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Late-Night Calls Every Day: We spent countless nights, working hard on our app. Even though we had our share of procrastination and bumps along the way, we pushed through and stayed dedicated to making our vision a reality. Those 1AM sessions were worth it!

All in all, we're super proud of how we adjusted through challenges and refined our approach to get to where SOAR is today!

What we learned

The power of teamwork! But really -- the workload was intense, but the support and collaboration within our team were truly magical. We navigated challenges and made major pivots together, transforming obstacles into opportunities. Our shared dedication and teamwork were key to overcoming hurdles and making S.O.A.R. a success!

What's next for S.O.A.R

We have a lot of plans in mind! We're perfecting the AI Chatbot further so it can accommodate for more of user's requests. We also hope to sync our AI Chatbot with the Dashboard to make the user-experience seamless. Stay tuned for the introduction of more languages and expansion of our AI Chatbot's database!