Jaquir's SAT Prep

From the Olden Days of the Hackathons

Inspiration

Kabir has too much money. He charges more than a grand for "SAT prep," when it's really an old man yelling at you to sit down and study. Unfortunately, those tactics were very effective. My family was too poor to afford Kabir, and had to rely on 500+ page books (which ended up useless). But because of this, I, with a 4.7 gpa, received a lower score on the SAT than a student who received a 1.4 gpa. You could call this a miracle story, but I myself have never seen that student study, nor show up to class. But of course, he bought Kabir, and with that advantage, found many more opportunities than me. More professionally, the divide Kabir's Prep has created created many apparent systemic issues, many being studied in social justice classrooms today. The main idea is to provide an equal opportunity to all students to be able to achieve a successful score on the SAT. So, that's when I thought of an idea. An idea that wished to provide every student opportunity to get a perfect score on the SAT. That idea began with a what if. A what if Kabir's SAT Prep was free to all students? Imagine the opportunities.

What it does

There are two main problems with the SAT. The first problem being the lack of motivation. Students see others taking Kabir, and then compare it to what they themselves have (which are mostly books). This demotivates the students because it seems impossible to achieve success in the SAT if they don't have Kabir. That is the toxic influence Kabir has on many young students.

The second problem being the weight of information. For many students, studying the SAT is like studying a different type of section in math/reading. They start, but once learning for 6 hours at school, then 2 hours on homework, another hour to learn new things on the SAT becomes too much work, and thus pushed off to the next day.

The way to solve both problems is to begin by providing a free, online resource and giving everyone access to an alternative way to study the SAT. They type in a homework question they were assigned that night, and our website will use a deep learning algorithm to find the most similar question that existed on a previous SAT, and then deliver a method to solve that question that the SAT would like the student to use (since it guarantees a correct answer every time).

Why is this good, the student gets to receive a real SAT problem thats similar to the topic the student is currently learning (allowing the student to tackle the question easier, and stay engaged). We then provide a method in order to find the solution to that question, in which the student can learn. Once the student has learned the method, they can continue to practice other similar SAT questions, or they can curiously submit another one of their homework questions just to see what past SAT question there was that's similar to today's topic.

But ultimately, you learn. What's best about it is that your SAT learning path aligns with your academics, making engagement easy for you. Imagine having real practice problems with methods that guarantees that you'll always find a solution. That is humanity. That is helping the world. Giving kids a free and equal chance.

That is freedom.

How we built it

It was quite interesting how we came up with this. We didn't have much coding knowledge before, so we were excited to learn. We each decided to split, and have one specialize in backend (learning about APIs and AI interactions) and the other in frontend (learning about the Next.js framework and React).

First, we had to understand that we needed to focus on a small area, or else we would never be able to complete the project, so we focused on the Math section of the SAT.

Second, once the student has submitted a math question, we used an agent to help us point to a question in a past SAT question dataset that's the most similar. We grab three of the closest ones, and then we use that output as an input to an AI that looks through official SAT materials, and selects the method used to solve these problems. We then have the AI name the method, and answer an SAT question using that method, being an "example" for students to reference while working on the unanswered SAT question.

Challenges we ran into

The biggest challenge was the fact that we didn't come in with an idea, nor did we start anytime early. We were in the ideation stage until 5 PM yesterday, and we coded for four hours. At exactly 9 PM, my partner and I conversed to see what we got done, but it turned out we completely misunderstood each other for another idea. I spent the next hour cooling off, and figuring out how in the world one gets into that situation in a hackathon. At 10 PM, we officially started coding, but then I remembered I had homework due last night. So I spent the next two hours finishing homework, finishing at the nick of time. Once midnight striked, I was baffled. I had 12 hours left to do a hackathon, and I didn't sleep yesterday because I was playing minecraft. This could not get any worse.

It did. My room passed out sleeping. It was just me. And oh boy, the last 12 hours transformed me. There is no amount of pain that hurt me anymore. And I refuse to believe in the concept on "misunderstanding."

To this writing, I am still awake, and plan on continuing to be so. I finally locked in.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Despite these hurdles, we’re proud of what we accomplished. We built a free SAT prep tool that lets students input a homework question, which is then matched with a similar question from past SATs along with a proven method to solve it. This not only provides a practical learning resource, but also bridges the gap created by expensive prep courses, ensuring that every student has access to quality test preparation without the high costs.

What we learned

Throughout the project, we learned valuable lessons about focus, perseverance, and collaboration. By honing in on the Math section of the SAT first, we were able to build a solid foundation and perfect our approach before considering expansion to other subjects. Each challenge, from debugging to aligning our datasets, taught us how to adapt and find creative solutions, reinforcing the idea that high-quality education should be accessible to everyone regardless of their financial background.

What's next for Jaquir's SAT Prep

Looking ahead, we plan to expand our tool to cover the Reading and Writing sections of the SAT and introduce more interactive features, such as gamified practice sessions and a community forum for study tips and shared strategies. Our ultimate goal is to create a comprehensive, accessible platform that continually evolves to meet the needs of all students, ensuring that every learner has the opportunity to succeed on the SAT without the financial burden of expensive prep courses.