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The dashboard leads with application readiness: how much of the actual work is done and on time, rather than with points. One deterministic engine computes it: the same engine your counselor's console reads, so the two can never disagree about the same student. Game mechanics exist but are deliberately secondary.
The headline percentage is a weighted average of category scores. Not everything counts equally. Essays are worth more of the score than branding because they are worth more of the work:
| Category | Weight |
|---|---|
| Essays | 18 |
| College list | 15 |
| Applications | 15 |
| Activities | 12 |
| Rec letters | 10 |
| Academics | 10 |
| Testing | 8 |
| Honors | 5 |
| Financial aid | 5 |
| Branding | 4 |
Weights are relative, normalized over the categories that apply to you. A category that cannot apply is dropped from the average rather than zeroed: declare test-optional and Testing leaves your score entirely, no aid need declared means Financial aid waits until you track something, and a school that switches Branding off removes it for the whole roster. Nothing can pin part of your score to a number you cannot move. Transfer applicants are scored on their own set: academics (units and college GPA) carries the most weight, and testing and honors are not counted at all.
Targets also scale with your grade. A sophomore with three colleges researched is on pace; a senior with three is not. The engine knows the difference and scores against where you are.
Each category is the sum of factor rows (“Personal statement final”, “A safety school”, “Nothing past its deadline”), each with the evidence that earned it and a link to the page where it moves. The readiness page (click the score ring, or any category tile) opens every category down to those rows, so “why is my score 43?” is never a mystery.
They stay separate because they answer different questions: you can be 90% ready with a developing honors profile, and both statements are true at once.
Every change that moves your score writes a ledger entry (what moved, by how many points, and why), so the number is traceable rather than vibes. A nightly snapshot keeps 90 days of history, which is where the “+2.4 since last week” chip and the sparkline come from. Come back after a productive day and the dashboard opens with what you banked since your last visit.
100% means the work is done and on time, not that you will get in. Readiness is a measure of process, not a prediction of admission; nobody can honestly sell you one of those.
On a desktop the dashboard has a sidebar: eighteen links in five groups, with your initials, your school and the readiness meter at the bottom.
A phone gets the same destinations arranged for a thumb instead. Four tabs are pinned to the bottom of the screen (Home, Colleges, Essays and Work), and More opens a sheet containing everything else, grouped exactly as the sidebar is. The readiness meter moves to a slim bar across the top, and tapping your initials there open your profile.
Both are built from one list, so a section can never appear on one and not the other. If your counselor has sent something you have not seen, the row lights up and the More tab carries a dot.
Pinch-to-zoom is left enabled everywhere. Text fields are set at 16px so iOS does not zoom the page when you tap into one.
If your school assigned you anything, it appears under the hero and ranks into your task list ahead of anything generated. A real person asking outranks anything the app inferred. Ticking one off awards 30 XP and reports completion back to your counselor. See Enterprise console.
The Counseling group in the sidebar holds the person on the other side of the terminal. If your school has a licence, its counselors are listed with the way into the thread. If nobody is paired with you yet, the page is where you ask: tell us where you are aiming and a person pairs you with a counselor.
Under the score, the application is listed room by room with a box beside each. Ticking it is your own call that the room is closed; it changes nothing in the engine, and the sidebar shows the tick beside the room. The score measures the work, the checklist records your judgement.
The three actions that move your score most, then the rest of the list. Every task is scored on urgency (days to its deadline), importance (a college deadline outranks a saved opportunity), impact (each generated task is priced in readiness points; the chip on the row is what finishing it is worth), and dependency (a task that unblocks others jumps the queue). A student with no college list cannot write supplements, so building the list absorbs their urgency and the blocked tasks wait below it.
The radar and the dashboard calendar read one merged feed of every dated thing you have put into the app. Ten sources, not four: college deadlines, saved opportunities, aid items, your own reminders, recommender due dates, registered test sittings and their registration cutoffs, interviews, honors deadlines, UCAS dates, and counselor tasks. One feed for both surfaces, so they can never disagree.
Items more than three days past due drop off the radar. Pills turn amber inside 30 days and red inside 7.
A short list of concrete extracurricular moves matched to your intended major, with an honest effort rating. Undecided students get exploration prompts instead.