TigerPath website helps students with long-term course planning

TigerPath is a new website that helps students plan out courses over their four-year tenure at the University.

Created by current students Daniel Leung ’20 and Adeniji Ogunlana ’19 and recent alumni Richard Chu ’18 and Barak Nehoran ’18, the website provides a clear interface on which students can lay out potential course schedules alongside a requirements checklist.

“Unlike other course selection apps, TigerPath is a tool that helps students with long-term planning for what courses to take during all eight semesters here at Princeton,” the creators said.

Initially a project for COS 333: Advanced Programming Techniques, the idea for the website arose from inefficiencies in course planning that the creators and their friends had experienced when attempting to use methods like Excel spreadsheets.

The website currently tracks general requirements for AB and BSE, as well as more specific requirements for all the BSE majors and two AB majors (the Woodrow Wilson School and Computer Science). According to Nehoran, the team is “constantly pushing to expand to more majors.” Their current priorities are heavily influenced by student feedback, and their ultimate goal is to provide support for every major.

The team is also working on adding in support for AP credits and study abroad courses.

“Encoding the requirements for individual majors was, and continues to be, the most difficult part of building the app,” Chu noted.

“Different departments have widely differing formats for their requirements, and putting them all into a standardized format for the app to interpret is an arduous task,” Nehoran added.

The website provides a convenient course search field along with smooth drag-and-drop functionality. The team has also integrated a third-party transcript API that automatically loads already-taken courses onto the website. A feedback form is available as well.

“We emphasize that it's not a replacement for actual advising, but rather a tool to be used in discussion with advisors,” Nehoran added.

“I definitely wish this was available when I was a freshman,” electrical engineering major Changxiao Xie ’20 said. “I had to navigate through the registrar and it was just difficult keeping track of all the classes.”

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“Integration of certificate programs would be a cool feature,” Xie added. “I wish there was a way where I could add two prospective majors and pick schedules for both of them just in case I was debating on changing majors.”