MakeItSo

Inspiration

When most students walk into college, they’re ambitious — but they’re also overwhelmed.

They don’t lack motivation. They lack clarity.

They’re asking themselves: What courses should I take? Which professors are actually helpful? When should I start applying for internships? Who should I be networking with right now?

And the problem isn’t that the information doesn’t exist. It’s that it’s scattered everywhere.

That’s why we built MakeItSo.

What it does

MakeItSo transforms a student’s degree into a structured path toward a career. Students can explore real courses pulled from Davidson’s live catalog, see professor insights and enrollment data, and use AI-powered deep dives to understand what skills each class actually builds. They can browse over 24 curated career paths that outline required skills, recommended courses, and summer opportunities to strengthen their profile early.

How we built it

We used Next.js API Routes (serverless), MongoDB Atlas + Mongoose, NextAuth.js authentication, and bcrypt password hashing on the backend. On the frontend, we used Next.js 14 + TypeScript, shadcn/ui + Tailwind CSS, Framer Motion animations, and Recharts visualizations. Data was taken live from the Davidson course schedule and RateMyProfessors, with Linkedin and WildcatSync indexing. Our AI engine is based around Google Gemini 3 Flash, with structured JSON outputs, smart caching (80% hit rate), and 6 distinct AI features

Challenges we ran into

We had a lot of trouble getting the Gemini API to work initially, but once we were up and running the build process was reasonably smooth. That's not to say that visual bugs didn't keep us up until 3am though :)