Student Capital

Going to College does not mean graduating with debt

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Inspiration

Credit is not accessible to everyone, especially college students. We decided that college students needed and effective alternative to credit that would allow them to be eligible for benefits under Capital One. If you lack any credit whatsoever, our Student Capital credit will provide a means of establishing a history and a basis for consumers to build off of.

What it does

Student Capital uses the Capital One Nessie API to collect information about the user’s spending habits and possible loan and credit history. We also collect data about the user’s GPA, degree program, extracurricular activities, and other defining characteristics. This information is compiled into a student model that we use to build a Student Credit Score. We can use this score to evaluate students for reduced loan payments, establish eligibility for scholarships, and provide relief for good students in bill payments and interest rates. The Student Credit Score can also be used as a basis for your credit history or a compliment to your current credit score.

How we built it

We provisioned an EC2 instance and installed Docker on it. We then installed MongoDB and Node.js in their own containers. After provisioning an SSL certificate to work with a payment processing service, we began calling the Nessie API to build our student data sets. We constructed a Bootstrap website and utilized many front-end frameworks to display our data sets and derive more information from them. Our algorithm was written as a weighted total of many individual scores based on school performance, financial stability, job history, and credit history.

Challenges we ran into

The first major challenge that we ran into with writing the algorithm was finding a way to accurately generate a score that rewarded or punished people for specific activities. We eventually divided the base algorithm into six major sections that were individually weighted to give us the desired result. We had issues with GIT merges in our backend, and our website had extensive issues with displaying our gauge. Using version control with many members of the team working on the front end became problematic as well as using a plethora front end libraries to display our data.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud to have made an application that effectively analyzes a student’s financial and educational history and provides a means for them to accrue credit and be represented in an ever growing competitive market.

What we learned

We built a full stack, learned how to use version control extremely well, and we learned how to combat some of the problems that students and financial institutions face with effectively managing credit.

What's next for Student Capital

The end goal of the project is to continue improving on our algorithm to represent individuals equally in the market. We also have intentions to develop a mobile app to compliment the website.

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