💰 CENSE
Develop a personalized financial wellness platform that helps young adults build financial stability and long-term wealth by automating complex financial decisions. The platform will securely connect to users' financial accounts and use income, spending patterns, debts, credit information, and personal goals to generate an actionable financial plan, including recommendations for budgeting, emergency savings, debt repayment, credit improvement, and savings optimization. Building on existing prototypes and sandbox integrations such as Plaid, the project will explore secure financial data architecture and API integrations while moving beyond traditional financial education toward personalized, automated guidance that tells users what to do next. The long-term goal is to make effective financial management more accessible, help young adults avoid costly financial mistakes, and contribute to closing the wealth gap.
Video: https://youtu.be/ZcwN0ZV9TMs
Motivations/ Characteristics: wants to implement positive impact at scale, wants ****to be an entrepreneur and build a product that launches, wants to make a difference and solve a problem in communities that are deprioritized, wants to develop skills. Enjoys working on a team, self-directed and complete projects, up for doing whatever it takes to complete the project. Plans to continue project beyond semester.
Github (not private): https://github.com/ithlambelle/cense
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Notion Scrum Page: CENSE
🌐 Project ABUJA — AI Built Unified Journey Application
When an investor or buyer is actively hunting for a living space in Massachusetts, a real estate agent is trying to find the most affordable houses quickly and efficiently, so they can save time searching and doing grunt work while closing more deals. Project ABUJA is a real estate platform trained on millions of houses and data points pulled from .gov and town websites across Massachusetts, aimed at helping people find undervalued properties across the area.
Video: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sOzJF_baIeCgqXuBHVVe7Z56N0_XBoEK/view?usp=sharing
Motivation/ Characteristics: We want people passionate about the real estate space and who also have an entrepreneurial mindset. We firmly believe that the world is in need of a platform to find undervalued properties and this is the start. We are looking for technical teammates who can help with the code but also someone who has the drive to help us get the data we need in order to build our platform. That being said, we are not discounting how it is important that we are in need of someone with good design experience as the user interface is just as important as the code that runs behind it. Come join us!
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🌱 Sapling
Sapling is an AI-powered study assistant built by students, for students. We believe that learning shouldn't be passive. It should adapt to you, challenge you, and show you exactly where you stand. At its core, Sapling maps your understanding as a live knowledge graph that grows with every session, quiz, and document you interact with. Paired with an AI tutor that can reason with you Socratically, explain concepts directly, or flip the table and have you teach back, Sapling meets you wherever you are in your learning journey. The product was born out of a hackathon and built by a team of four students who were frustrated with static study tools that don't actually know what you know. We wanted something that feels less like a flashcard app and more like a study partner who's always prepared. This semester, we’ll take this project to the next level.
Preparing for a conference at Vanderbilt for a product showcase in October.
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nR59UYz_uZE
Motivations/characteristics: We want people who believe in what Sapling is trying to do, which is to make studying with AI actually build understanding instead of replacing it. If that idea doesn't interest you, nothing else on this list will carry you.
This fall we're launching a beta campaign for BU students using their real coursework. That means students will be studying for actual classes on our platform, and everything we ship gets judged on whether it holds up against their real assignments and exams. Course material has to be accurate, the tutor has to be useful and scalable during a stressful week, and the site has to work on a phone at midnight. Joining now means working on a product with real users, not a demo. The differentiating factor is that Sapling’s model will have context on material connected with the university, not based on information available online.
The work does not stop when the semester does. The beta and the October showcase at Vanderbilt both land outside class time, so we need people who plan to keep going through breaks and into next term.
You should want to work closely with the rest of the team, especially our engineering and marketing interns. Very little here happens alone. You'll also be expected to help with outreach and networking, since a lot of Sapling's progress comes from relationships with researchers, partners, and investors.
Be self-directed and understand what work you’re responsible for when the team is working independently.
Github (not private): https://github.com/SaplingLearn/Sapling
Product link: https://saplinglearn.com/
Poster: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KyV_uRWqcg5RXx0dXlronnQSqzUd0meH/view?usp=sharing