It’s incredibly frustrating to have to setup your own system to keep track of your certificates and school accomplishments, especially in preparation for college app season. Students are currently stuck using a mix of Excel, Word, and LinkedIn to list out extracurricular activities, or use the doc-based templates provided by each school’s admissions office that put a carpel tunnel emphasis on manual data entry (dates, descriptions, issuer, etc), on top of scanned copies of each certificate. Most of this is due to the fact that extracurricular organizers share digital copies of certificates through pdfs and Google Drive.

The Common Application platform has its own system of extracurricular tracking, but it has the base functionality of a text box with no backend logic for verification, which leaves the burden of verifying the authenticity of a student’s extracurricular activity on each individual school (refer back to horrendous template).

It’s pretty ridiculous how there is no system for managing student certifications. There is e-certificate software out there where institutions can build their own customizable e-certificates/smart contracts, some even built-in with blockchain level encryption, but their interfaces were obviously not built with students in mind. TLDR, we are creating a student-centric e-certificate/badge system.

Sang (상) is the Korean word for "award".