GraduAI — Your AI-Powered Degree Planning Copilot
Year 1 (2025-26)
by Arriza Wibowo
GraduAI uses AI to read your degree audit, understand your requirements, and help you plan every semester — so you never take the wrong class again.
About This Idea
GraduAI is an AI-powered web application that helps college students understand their degree requirements and plan their course registration, semester by semester.
The problem is simple but costly: degree audits like DegreeWorks are confusing, advising offices are overwhelmed, and one wrong class can cost a student an entire semester and thousands of dollars. At WMU alone, students regularly face 20+ person wait times outside advising offices just to get help picking classes.
GraduAI solves this by letting students upload their DegreeWorks PDF, which the app parses into a clear, visual breakdown of what they've completed and what they still need. Requirements are organized into intuitive sections — "Complete All" for required courses and "Choose N" for elective groups — so students understand their degree at a glance.
From there, students chat with an AI advisor that understands their degree progress, the course catalog, and prerequisite chains. They can ask "What should I take next semester?" or "Am I on track to graduate?" and get personalized answers instantly — no appointment needed. They can also build semester-by-semester plans with a drag-and-drop interface and share them with advisors or friends via a simple link.
The goal isn't to replace human advisors, but to handle the routine questions that clog advising offices, freeing staff to focus on students who need deeper support.
Looking ahead, GraduAI becomes dramatically more powerful with institutional partnership. If we become official with WMU and gain access to live course data, real-time seat availability, and prerequisite chains, the AI moves from helpful to indispensable — warning students that a class is almost full, flagging scheduling conflicts, or noting a prerequisite is only offered in fall. That's the vision: a platform where students plan and advisors advise, powered by the same trusted data.
Where Did This Idea Spark at WMU?
This idea came directly from lived experience. As a Computer Science student who transferred into WMU from KVCC, I’ve been through the frustration of trying to map transferred credits to WMU’s degree requirements and figure out what still counts. Working as a Student IT worker at both KVCC and WMU, I’ve also seen the other side — how overloaded administrative and advising systems are.
Every registration period, you see the same thing: long lines outside advising offices, students scrambling to figure out what to take, and advisors doing their best to keep up with demand. Most of the time, students just need help reading their degree audit and picking the right classes — something an AI that understands the audit could handle instantly. That’s the gap GraduAI fills.
Impact in Kalamazoo
WMU has over 17,000 students. If GraduAI helps even a portion of them register more efficiently, the ripple effects are real: fewer wasted credits means students save money, graduate faster, and enter the Kalamazoo workforce sooner. That benefits local employers who are hiring and the regional economy.
On the institutional side, better course planning means higher retention and graduation rates — metrics that directly affect WMU’s funding and reputation. Advising staff get relief from routine questions and can focus on students who need deeper guidance.
Starting at WMU means we build with local students as our first users, iterate based on their real feedback, and create something that’s genuinely shaped by the Kalamazoo student experience. If it works here, it works anywhere.
How Investment Helps
Right now, I can build the product — I have the technical skills. What funding unlocks is the ability to move faster and build it right. Investment would go toward infrastructure costs (hosting, API access for the AI layer), design and UX improvements to make the app genuinely intuitive, and a small marketing push to get the first cohort of WMU students testing it.
The first local milestone: a working beta with 100+ WMU students actively using GraduAI to plan their Fall 2026 registration. That’s the proof point — real students, at a real university, in Kalamazoo, planning their degrees with AI. From there, we can approach WMU administration about an official partnership and begin expanding to other Michigan campuses.
What I'll Do With the Money
Infrastructure + AI/API usage (40% = $40,000): This portion covers cloud hosting, database services, and LLM/API costs so the platform stays stable and responsive throughout beta testing and initial launch.
Design + UX (25% = $25,000): These funds support improving the degree-parsing view and semester planner so the experience feels polished, easy to understand, and trustworthy for students.
Marketing + launch (20% = $20,000): This budget is dedicated to campus outreach, social content, and onboarding materials to recruit early users and reach the first 100+ WMU beta testers.
Legal + miscellaneous + contingency (15% = $15,000): This set-aside covers terms of service and privacy policy needs, domain and branding expenses, and a small contingency buffer for unexpected costs.
About the Founder
I'm Arriza Wibowo, a sophomore CS student at WMU. I transferred from KVCC, where I also worked as a Student IT worker, a role I continue at WMU. I've seen the advising bottleneck as a transfer student navigating confusing degree audits, and as someone who works within university systems. My father is a professor, so higher education runs in my family. I have the technical skills to build this, and now is the time. Every semester that passes is another round of students struggling to register.