UniMe

Landing Page
MatchMe Survey
MatchMe Results

🚀 Inspiration

Being a content creator focused on academic hopecore and waterloo engineering life, Anna's received hundreds of messages from high schoolers asking for advice about post-secondary—what program to choose, what schools are “good,” and what their chances are. She wanted to help every one of them, but couldn’t keep up, especially with the randomness and variety of program questions asked.

Many of these students have no one else to turn to. In Ontario, the average ratio is 1 guidance counsellor for every 500 students, and countless students report feeling unsupported, unheard, or dismissed. Others are too young or nervous to reach out on LinkedIn or don’t know how to ask for advice from strangers online.

That’s what sparked UniMe—a platform that scales guidance everyone student deserves, making it accessible, personalized, and helpful for any student navigating this overwhelming journey.

What it does

UniMe is a website that includes three main features:

🧠 MatchMe: A short, quiz-style survey that recommends a list of university programs based on your academic preferences, campus vibe preferences, and social priorities. Results are downloadable directly from the site.

🎯 ChanceMe: A tool that calculates your chances of getting into a specific program, factoring in your grades, adjustment factor and extracurriculars to generate a customized likelihood score.

🤝 Mentorship: For every program recommended, you can connect with a real student currently in that program to ask questions, hear their experience, and get honest insight into what it’s really like.

UniMe is designed to feel like having an accessible personalized academic counselor.

How we built it

Frontend: React with Tailwind CSS for styling and responsiveness Backend: Flask to handle quiz logic and routing, pandas for program data analysis PDF Downloads: reportlab to generate downloadable MatchMe results Design: Figma for wireframes and UI/UX prototyping

The team also wrote custom quiz logic and built a scoring algorithm for ChanceMe based on publicly available data and anecdotal admission trends

Challenges we ran into

User testing regarding our logistics for the quiz Getting the features we wanted done within the time constraint

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Rapidly Iterating Based on User Feedback: We actively gathered feedback from potential users throughout the development process and made thoughtful adjustments to improve usability and overall experience. Being able to adapt quickly helped us build a product that better addressed real user needs.

Effective Task Delegation and Prioritization: With limited time, we focused on clear communication and strategic task distribution within our team. By prioritizing high-impact features and managing our workload efficiently, we ensured that our core functionality was completed and polished before the deadline.

What we learned

User Empathy Drives Better Design and Development: We learned that truly understanding our users—how they think, feel, and interact with technology—should guide both our design decisions and technical implementation. Centering empathy in the process helped us build something more intuitive and impactful.

From Impacting One to Empowering Many: Supporting a single student was deeply rewarding, but realizing that we could scale that support to thousands was a powerful shift in perspective. We saw firsthand how building with purpose and scalability in mind can multiply the value of our work.

The importance of building with real users in mind—not just an “ideal” audience

What's next for UniMe

💬 AI-Powered Chatbot – The team plans to integrate a conversational chatbot that can instantly answer general guidance-related questions. From application deadlines to program differences, students will get 24/7 support without needing to dig through websites or wait for a reply. 📈 Refined ChanceMe Estimator – Incorporate more user data and feedback to improve the accuracy and transparency of chance predictions. 📱 Mobile Optimization – Launch a fully mobile-first version of the platform for easier access on-the-go. 🌍 Expanded Pathways – Add support for international students, colleges, trades, and gap year planning. 🧑‍🏫 School Partnerships – Collaborate with educators and school boards to offer UniMe as a tool in guidance departments.