We built ReqPath to make course selection clearer for students and simpler for schools
Course selection is one of the most consequential decisions a high school student makes, and one of the most labor-intensive periods of a school's year. The software available to schools has not kept pace with either problem. ReqPath was built to address both.
01Students are asked to plan four years of classes before they know what they want to study
A typical ninth grader receives a lengthy course guide, a set of selection forms, and a brief meeting with a counselor who is responsible for hundreds of other students. From that, the student is expected to produce a four-year plan that supports their college and career goals.
Most schools still manage course selection with PDFs and spreadsheets. Prerequisites are listed at the back of the course guide, and a requirement for a junior-year AP class is easy to overlook until it can no longer be met.
As a result, many students choose the same classes as their friends. They miss electives they did not know existed. Some reach senior year and discover that the engineering pathway they wanted required a math class they did not take two years earlier. At that point, the plan can no longer be corrected.
A poor choice in ninth grade can limit a student's options for the rest of high school.
"I didn't know I needed Algebra 2 sophomore year for the AP track. By the time anyone told me, I'd already taken something else."
02Building the master schedule takes weeks of manual work every year
A master schedule appears simple: match students to classes, assign teachers, and place each section in a period. In practice, it involves thousands of constraints that change throughout the process.
Counselors compile selection forms by hand. Administrators estimate section counts because actual demand is not known until it is too late to adjust staffing. Teachers receive their schedules a few weeks before school starts. Students receive theirs when the year begins, and a third of them have a conflict.
The same process repeats the following year. Most of this work is not institutional knowledge. It is manual labor that is repeated each year because the tools do not carry it forward.
Software should handle the repetitive parts of this process so that counselors and administrators can spend their time on work that requires their judgment.
03A planning tool built on each school's own catalog and requirements
Course planning is well suited to software assistance. The catalog is finite, prerequisites are structured, each student has individual goals, and much of the logistics is repetitive. Most existing tools, however, were designed to store records rather than to help anyone plan.
We began with one question: could a student type "I want to study mechanical engineering" and receive a complete four-year plan that uses only the classes their school offers, follows every prerequisite, and explains why each class was chosen?
Once that worked, the rest of the system followed from it. The catalog and prerequisite tree that the advisor relies on are the same data a school needs for its own operations. That data now supports scheduling, demand projections, graduation tracking, and counselor caseloads, and it is maintained in one place.
ReqPath is designed to meet the needs of a school's administrative staff while remaining clear enough for a ninth grader to plan their own classes.
04The principles that guide our decisions
01Students come first
We do not release a feature that makes the school's work easier at the expense of the students who use it. Students are the primary users we design for, even though the school is the customer.
02The AI advisor only makes suggestions
The advisor suggests classes and explains its reasoning. Students and counselors make the final decisions, and ReqPath will never enroll a student in a class the student did not choose.
03Schools own their data
All data you enter in ReqPath can be exported in standard formats, on every plan, at any time. We do not sell or share it, and we do not use it to train models.
04Graduated pricing on every plan
Each tier's lower rate applies only to the students within that tier, so growth never reprices your existing students. Our tier rates are published so that you can verify every invoice.
05Practical, predictable software
Most of a school's work is operational, and the software should support that work directly. That means CSV imports, predictable exports, and error messages written in plain language.
06Built with schools
Our design decisions come from counselors, administrators, and students describing the problems they face. We will continue to set the roadmap this way.
05Current work and planned features
ReqPath is an early-stage product. The timeline below shows what has been released, what is in progress, and what is planned after launch. The order and timing of planned work may change.
Catalog, tree builder, and class views
ReleasedSchools can build their full class catalog and map prerequisites visually. Students can browse the catalog as a grid, a list, or a tree.
AI advisor (alpha)
ReleasedFour-year plan drafts based on a student's career interests and limited to the school's catalog and prerequisites.
Master scheduler and demand forecasting
In progressMaster schedules generated from student selections, with conflict detection and exportable schedules for each teacher and student. This is the largest remaining item before public launch.
Counselor workspace and parent portal
NextCaseload views, plan approvals, audit history, and an optional read-only portal where families can view plans.
SIS integrations
LaterDirect synchronization with PowerSchool, Infinite Campus, and other common student information systems, so that course selections can be transferred without exporting and importing CSV files.
Our goal is a course selection process that students understand
We want every student to understand the choices in front of them, and we want the counselors and administrators who guide them to have the time and tools to do that work well.
If your school faces the problems described above, we would like to hear from you. Schools in the early-access program help determine what we build next and receive a discount on their first year.
Thank you for reading.
The ReqPath teamContact us at [email protected].
Join the early-access program.
Early-access schools receive a first-year discount, input on the roadmap, and access to the dashboard while it is in development.