CHCKR

Hey, Product Hunt! We are super excited to introduce CHCKR and get your feedback. (1) Background: 1/2 of our founding team comes from the education space. Specifically, they've built a non-profit venture that, since 2015, has helped 250+ talented students from Ukraine get admitted into top boarding schools and colleges on full scholarships. The idea to build CHCKR came after teaching the basics of application essay writing to multiple cohorts of students who, no matter how brilliant, were all making the same mistakes and generally followed the same path from newbies to capable application essay writers. The other 1/2 of the founding team has deep ML and AI backgrounds and a track record of having built multiple AI projects & products out of Kyiv, Ukraine. At CHCKR, we combined college advising and ML/AI expertise to build a tool that enables college applicants to write coherent, well-balanced, and powerful application essays. (2) Mission: Our goal is to offer an affordable (priced at $10) and reliable alternative to independent college consultants and overwhelmed school counselors. We hope to move the needle toward leveling the playing field and giving every graduating high school senior a shot at telling their story in a way that will be understood and memorable. (3) Features: CHCKR runs on a mix of proprietary NLP/ML models and 3rd party APIs (e.g., ChatGPT, plagiarism modules, etc.). We intentionally stayed away from paraphrasing / re-writing text and doubled down on (a) taking a snapshot of the baseline (an essay score on a scale from 0 to 100 and a synthesis of strengths / weaknesses) and (b) offering a step-by-step guide on how to improve (error cards that briefly explain what the error is, the rationale for why it's an error, and several examples to illustrate the point). Some of the more advanced features detect topic jumping, lack of insights about the author, opportunities for show vs. tell, etc. CHCKR looks at structure, flow, syntax, and grammar. (4) Target audience: CHCKR is intended for high school students who are at different stages of the college application process - either eager to get feedback on their early drafts or looking to polish a well-baked common app essay. Over time, we humbly hope to become a go-to resource for graduating high school seniors applying to college. (5) Our goal on Product Hunt: We hope to receive feedback on the product and a steer toward ways to get our first 1000 users. We've gone through several small scale launches in the past and received positive feedback from ~50-100 beta testers / early adopters. We hope to scale our sample of data points to shape the next 6-12 months of our growth.

Congratulations on your Product Hunt launch, and securing the 4th rank! CHCKR sounds like a fantastic tool for college applicants. To make it even better, consider adding these features: Integration with popular college application platforms for seamless submission. Multi-language support to cater to international applicants. Interactive essay examples from successful applicants for inspiration. Gamified challenges to encourage continuous writing improvement. Would love to connect on Product Hunt to discuss more ideas. Keep up the great work!

Congrats Julia on the launch!

awesome initative, congrats on the launch! :)

and a quick video in case easier for folks to watch vs. read