CARL
The College Application Reminder List
Introduction
Every autumn comes a significant time in many high school students' lives here in the United States: college application season. This pivotal process is defining in how many continue their path of higher education. And yet, this process is not only confusing, but it lacks unification in many regards. Different schools have different deadlines, application requirements, and even different application portals that need to be used. For anyone, let alone high school students, this can be an overwhelming amount of knowledge to organize and manage. However, the consequences of forgetting are incredibly high, as mistakes can mean automatic school rejections. CARL aims to reduce that pressure on students.
The product of a 12-hour hackathon at the University of Washington, CARL stands for the College Application Reminder List, an app dedicated to helping students keep track of their college application checklists and deadlines.
Research Methods
Personal Narratives
As a group of current undergraduate students, we all had recent experiences going through the college application system to get to where we were through experiences of being citizens and non-citizens. We each brought with us our own pain points in the college application system, leading us to the idea of CARL. It was personal and known to us about how useful an application like CARL would have been for us just a year or two ago.
User Interviews
At the hackathon, industry mentors were present to help out groups and review ideas. As mentors stopped by our group, they paused for a bit longer to talk with us about their own college application experiences. In talking to them, we learned a lot more about different experiences and pain points with the college experience, especially the lack of resources and the feeling that all the burden is on the student who is applying.
Learnings
The main takeaway from our conversations was that the college application process was complicated for many of us, regardless of our background. For many, it was because no one directly in our lives could help us, whether it was because we were first-generation college students or because no one in our family understood the current application systems. Looking back, to have something that took off some of the pressure to remember critical deadlines in the process would have reduced a lot of stress and anxiety.
It’s not just us, the college application system is seen as a broken one by many
Design Process
With the time remaining, we created an initial prototype on Figma. We wanted to be able to save students' spots and choices so it's linked to their accounts. This also lets others be able to log in and check their status from others' devices. Once in, users will be able to see popular schools on different application systems at a glance and search for schools they want to add to their calendar. Students will be able to view basic school information, see the top programs, and add the school on school profiles. Once added, users can click on the middle button to check their timeline and see what deadlines are approaching. Settings are there if users would like to change any info like name and notification settings.
Prototype
Our final prototype is shown here. Please feel free to interact with it!
