I built a tool to help South African matric students navigate university applications (Flask, first real project)

A South African developer has created a tool to assist matric students in navigating university applications. The platform, called Matric Helper, aggregates information from 26 public universities, including deadlines, APS requirements, application fees, and certification rules for documents. Students, particularly first-generation applicants, often find the process overwhelming and struggle with the diverse rules across universities.

Matric Helper simplifies the process by presenting all the information in a single location. It includes a directory of universities with up-to-date deadlines, APS requirements, and application fees. Users can also access an APS calculator by entering their subject marks to determine which universities they currently qualify for. A search function, including common alternatives like "University of Pretoria," helps users quickly find the institution they're interested in.

The platform offers a comparison tool that allows users to view two universities side by side, making it easier to assess which institution might be the best fit. Additionally, Matric Helper provides curated links to free official study materials, such as past papers and free textbooks, to support students' academic preparation. Users can create a "favorites" list using Flask sessions, which doesn't require a login, to conveniently save their preferred universities and resources.

The developer, who is relatively new to programming, built Matric Helper as their first real project. The tech stack consists of Flask, Jinja2 templates, vanilla CSS (without a frontend framework), and Flask sessions for the favorites feature. The application is deployed on Render with Gunicorn and utilizes a Python list of dictionaries to store data, which has been a fun challenge in terms of constraints. However, the developer acknowledges that there is still much to learn and improve.

At this stage, the developer welcomes feedback on several aspects of the project. They would appreciate insight on any fragile components that may break under real-world use, as well as feedback on whether the session-based favorites approach is a reasonable solution for now or if a real database should be prioritized sooner. The developer is also open to general code structure feedback, as they have been putting everything in one Python file and anticipate that this approach may become problematic as the project grows.