

Show HN: College List Maker - BlackJack
http://clm-collegelistmaker.rhcloud.com/

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BlackJack
Hi, creator here. I made this app using Express + Mongoose and the great
Hackathon Starter framework ([https://github.com/sahat/hackathon-
starter](https://github.com/sahat/hackathon-starter)), all hosted on
OpenShift. I basically got a lot of college data from the IPEDS database and
made a form so users can submit their SAT score and figure out which schools
to apply to. Safety schools are those that you have a great shot of getting
into, Match schools are those where you fit the median profile, and Reach
schools are that you have a lower chance of getting into.

I thought it'd be useful for kids who want to explore schools to apply to for
college. The app is very barebones, but I had a lot of fun dipping my toes in
web dev and learning some new technologies. If people like it I'll work on
adding more features like entering your zip code/GPA to get a much better
admissions profile. Admission at most colleges is based on your transcript and
scores, and most kids stay in-state, so both of those would be pretty useful
data points.

I'd love any feedback!

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trendoid
Refreshing the page not working, "cant get /results".

Tabbing doesn't work so I have to click on every text box to type.

You need to increase the number of colleges on the first page itself.

Keep working on this(potential of being helpful to many) and add more criteria
as you mentioned.

~~~
BlackJack
Hey thanks for the feedback. For refresh, can you tell me what browser/device
you're using? Refresh and tabs both work for me on Chrome on OSX, but I didn't
test anything else :(

I currently use 2-4-2 for colleges, but it's arbitrary. I'm playing around
with a 3 column UI with 5-6 colleges in each section. I didn't want to
overwhelm the user but it seems like 8 total is too small.

~~~
trendoid
I was using Firefox on OSx at the time I checked. I did another check on Opera
and refresh isnt working and displaying same error. Now I can move between
textboxes using tab.

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Paul_Dessert
I think you did a good job! Nice start! As you're saying, adding more criteria
would make it better.

I entered "800" for all 3 scores and only got a few schools. Are you limiting
the results?

~~~
BlackJack
For 2400 there are no Reaches since you'd be in the top for every school.
There's an issue with the random selector so schools get duplicated sometimes,
so I'll fix that.

Update: For the matches there's only six results in total which is why the
output is so little. If you've got a perfect score, pretty much everything is
a safety ;)

~~~
Paul_Dessert
Yeah, if you have a perfect SAT score, I'm sure you're not hunting around for
schools. :)

I'm just saying there are a lot of schools out there. If I used your site to
find schools, I'd like to see all available options.

~~~
BlackJack
I currently display 2 safeties, 4 matches, and 2 reaches. I wanted people to
refresh to see other results, but I could think of giving other options to
show more results. I just didn't want to dump tens or hundreds of schools at a
time.

