Summer programs, competitions, research and scholarships. Every deadline is checked against the official page, and if it isn't announced yet, we say so.
When our robotics team lost its sponsor, I started a Saturday repair shop in the school library. We fixed 43 laptops in four months and spent every dollar on parts. I learned that leadership is about helping others.
Every club, event and question at your school in one feed. Each club gets its own page, and the people running it keep it clean.
Try the example: tap a club, tap "I'm going".
Find your real school on Groundwork to post, join clubs and reply. If it isn't there, you can start it in a minute.
Put in your grades, scores and activities. Get your chances at 70 colleges from their published admit data.
Summer programs, competitions and research matched to what you're into and how you like to work — then a place to track the deadlines and write the applications. Not another list to scroll.
No signup. About two minutes. Free while it’s in beta — and your workspace is never metered.
Paid programs with real financial aid still show up under "free."
Pick at least one interest first.
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All 267, if you'd rather look around yourself.
Groundwork is not charging anyone right now. Everything on this site works, costs nothing, and needs no account. There is no payment form because there is nothing to pay for yet.
Every part of the product, open to anyone, with no signup.
The strongest applicants aren't always the strongest students. They're the ones whose families knew which programs existed, which deadlines mattered, and what each summer was for. That knowledge is expensive. It shouldn't be.
Grade, interests, budget, location, goals. That's the whole setup, and it stays on your own device.
Summer programs, research, competitions, and internships matched to the profile — each one stamped likely, match, or reach. No fantasy lists.
Deadline reminders and one concrete action at a time for the student, so nothing quietly slips past.
| Groundwork | Private consultant | School counselor | Free lists online | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Personalized program matches | ● Always current | ● Manual | — Rarely | ◐ Generic |
| Deadline tracking + reminders | ● Automatic | ◐ If you call | — | — |
| Weekly action plan | ● | ● | — | — |
| Honest odds per program | ● Scored | ◐ Varies | — | — |
| Cost | Free | $300/hr · $20K–80K packages | Free · ~400:1 ratio | Free · you do everything |
Groundwork launches to a small first cohort this fall. Parents get priority.
One email when your cohort opens. No spam, ever.
This can't be undone. Your login and the roadmap saved with it will be deleted.
Your work is saved in this browser. Erasing it removes My work, saved reports and essay drafts from this browser only.
You're signed in from your reset link. Pick a new password to finish.
Other students see it on your profile and in your communities. Use your real first and last name.
It comes from Groundwork. Not there after a minute? Check Spam and Promotions.
An account keeps your roadmap on any device you sign in on. It is optional, and everything on the site works without one.
We store your email, your saved program list, the communities you create or join (with the display name you pick), what you post there, and your profile if you fill one in. Nothing else. You can delete the account and everything in it at any time from this box or from Settings.
Not running yet. Emailing students means holding their addresses, and that needs a registered organisation behind it. Groundwork does not have one, so nothing is sent.
For anything that is not in the catalogue: an independent study, a job, a club you run, research with a local professor. It gets a folder like any other, and you can keep essays in it.
Drag a program between columns, or drag a folder up here from your roadmap below. On a phone, tap a card and it moves to the next column.
The programs you picked, each with its deadline and its essays. Saved in this browser only — never on our servers. Switching devices? Download a backup first.
Paste an application essay and get the kind of read a counselor gives — what's working, what isn't, and the questions to answer in your next draft.
Pick one and the feedback is judged against that program, not essays in general.
Editing — your highlights stay put. Rewrite a highlighted bit and its note will mark itself as changed.
Most students send twenty near-identical emails and hear nothing. The ones who get a reply usually sent three, and spent an hour on each. Here's the method, and the emails.
Read the faculty page and find someone whose actual current work interests you — not whose title sounds impressive. Five is right. Twenty means you aren't reading anything.
Everyone skips this and it's the step that decides whether you get a reply. Google Scholar, their name, something from the last two years. You don't need the statistics — you need the question they asked, what they found, and one thing that surprised you. That note is the foundation of the whole email.
This is where most templates fail.
If your subject line would work for any professor in the department, rewrite it.
One: the connection — name the paper and the one thing that caught you. Two: who you are — name, grade, school, and only the background relevant to their work. Not your GPA. Three: a specific small ask, with the hours you can actually commit.
Mid-semester, not the first or last two weeks. Tuesday to Thursday morning. Three to four months before you want to start — so January to March for a summer spot.
Ten to fourteen days later, as a reply to your own email so the original is attached. Two sentences. If they don't reply to that, they aren't going to — and silence usually means no funding or no bench space, not a judgement about you.
Most emails get no reply. That's the normal outcome, not a failure. Five careful emails beat fifty copied ones and take about the same total time. And a "no" often comes with something useful — another name, a program you hadn't heard of, an offer to talk in the autumn. Reply and thank them either way.
Fill this in like your application: grades, scores, activities, awards. You get your stats in one place, a rough chance at each school, and what would help most. Your report stays in your browser. The one exception: when you use Ask Groundwork, your question and report go to our AI to answer it.
On a phone, press and hold the image to save it.
How this works. Each school starts from its real admit rate (linked on every card). Your grades, classes, scores, activities and awards then move it up or down. At schools that admit more students, grades and scores count a bit more than activities. The range is wide on purpose: essays, recommendations, your major and whether you apply early matter a lot, and we can't see them. At schools that admit under 15%, everyone is a reach, including students with perfect stats.
Clubs, sports, research, jobs, volunteering, things you built. Up to 10, like the Common App. Your top 3 count most. Each one gets a rating out of 10 on your report.
Competitions, honors, scholarships. Up to 5.
Colleges read every application in context. Check what applies. First-gen adds a small boost to your chances; the others change how colleges read the rest, and your report says how.
Save to open your full report: a rating for every activity, a timeline to graduation, a 6-month plan and your objectives.
On a phone, press and hold the image to save it.
This updates as you change anything above. Tap Show all for every school.
How this works. Each school starts from its real admit rate (linked on every card). Your grades, classes, scores, activities and awards then move it up or down. At schools that admit more students, grades and scores count a bit more than activities. The range is wide on purpose: essays, recommendations, your major and whether you apply early matter a lot, and we can't see them. At schools that admit under 15%, everyone is a reach, including students with perfect stats.
When you tap Ask, your question and your report go to our AI to answer it. Not your name or email. Answers can be wrong, so check dates on official sites.
For every objective with a date: a check-in halfway ("How's it going?") and one on the day ("Did you do it?").
Get everyone at your school in one place: every club, every event, every question. Whoever starts a school's community is its owner. You write the rules, approve the clubs and pick the admins.
Free. About 30 seconds with Google or email. Your essays stay on your device.
Clubs post their events and people tap "I'm going". Ask a question and whoever knows can answer.
Build night Thursday in the shop. Snacks provided!
Anyone have notes from AP Bio today?
The person who starts a community is its owner. Here's what that gets you.
Search by full name. You'll see people in your communities, and anyone who made their profile findable.
LAST UPDATED 10 AUGUST 2026
Groundwork is built and run by one high-school student in San Francisco. It is not a company. If you want anything explained or removed, email help.trygroundwork.app@gmail.com.
These are stored in your browser using localStorage. They are not sent anywhere, and no one else can read them, not even me:
Clearing your browser data deletes all of it permanently. There is no backup, because there is no server copy.
Four features need an AI model to read your text. Each one sends only what that feature needs, only at the moment you press the button, and keeps nothing afterwards.
| When you do this | What is sent |
|---|---|
| Ask for essay feedback, a grammar check, a re-read, or a rewrite of one passage | The draft you pasted, your note about it, and the name of the program you picked |
| Answer the interview questions | Your answers so far — grade, interests, budget, location, what you’re looking for |
| Ask a follow-up question about your results | Your question and your match profile |
| Ask Groundwork a question on My report | Your question, your report (grades, scores, activities, awards, the background boxes you checked, your note, your objectives, the schools you picked) and your last few questions and answers. Not your name or email |
That text is held in memory for the length of a single request and is then gone. It is not written to any database, log or file. It is not attached to your name, because your name is never asked for.
No advertising and no tracking cookies are running on this site, and nothing follows you to other sites.
Measurement, and exactly what it does. Two tools tell me whether anyone is using this and where it breaks. Vercel Web Analytics counts page views. PostHog records which features get used, for example that an interview was completed or a program was saved, and it records sessions so I can see where people get stuck.
What is masked, and why. PostHog is configured so that everything you type is hidden. Your essay, anything you write in a feedback box, and every other input is masked before a recording is stored. I can see that an essay was submitted. I cannot see the essay. Nothing you write is ever sent as content.
I do not identify you to these tools. No name, no email, no account ID is sent, and nothing follows you to other sites. If a link that brought you here had a tag on it, that tag travels with these events so I can tell which post reached you, which is the same tag described above. Any ad blocker stops all of this, and the site works exactly the same without it.
One small exception, described plainly. Links shared by Groundwork sometimes end in a tag like ?ref=maya, which records which post or which person a visit came from. That tag is stored in your own browser and is only ever sent anywhere if you choose to fill in the waitlist form, where it arrives alongside your answers so I can tell which post reached you. It is not a cookie, it does not identify you, it is not shared with anyone, and nothing on the site is affected by whether it is there. Clearing your browser storage removes it.
If you make an account. Accounts are optional and nothing on the site is locked behind one. If you create one, two things are stored on a server (Supabase): your email address, and the list of programs you saved along with the status of each. That is all. Your essays are never uploaded. Drafts stay in your browser exactly as they do without an account, and they are not part of what syncs between devices. You can delete your account and everything stored with it at any time from the account box, and deletion is immediate.
Groundwork is built for high-school students and is not intended for children under 13. Please don’t use it. If you believe a child under 13 has entered information here, email the address above and it will be deleted.
If the way Groundwork handles information changes — for instance if accounts are ever added — this page will be updated before that change goes live, and the date at the top will change with it.
Every date on this site is either marked as confirmed or clearly labelled as a typical past pattern. Only a small number of programs have published their next cycle, and Groundwork says which ones on the card. Always check the program’s official page before you rely on any date here. Programs change their rules, dates and eligibility without telling anyone, and Groundwork is not responsible for a missed deadline.
Groundwork is a research and organisation tool. It is not a counsellor, not an admissions consultant, and not a guarantee of anything. Being matched to a program is not a prediction that you will get in.
It gives feedback on writing you already did. It will not write an essay for you, and it will rewrite only a passage you point it at, using only facts you supplied. Anything you submit to a program must be your own work, and every program’s own rules about outside help apply to you.
Groundwork is free right now and nothing on it can be bought. If a paid tier is ever added, it will be announced clearly and the student tier will remain free.
This is an early product run by one person. It can break, change or go offline. Keep your own copy of anything you would be upset to lose.