AI App Cuts Manual Processing Time by 70%

The Vermont Student Assistance Corporation (VSAC) partnered with NineTwoThree to build Award Advisor, an AI-powered mobile and web platform that helps students compare college financial aid offers. The platform also equipped admins with powerful lead generation and analytics capabilities.

CONCEPT

Award Letters Confuse Instead of Inform

College award letters are inconsistent and nearly impossible to compare. One school might show a lower balance but assume $30,000 in loans, while another shows higher costs with only $5,000 in loans, obscuring the true financial picture.

VSAC, a nonprofit competing against high-interest private lenders, needed a scalable solution that would provide students with instant cost comparisons, generate qualified leads for their low-interest loan programs, create a partner lead marketplace, and build a financial aid research database. The vision: students photograph their award letters and receive AI-powered analysis instantly on their phones.

CHALLENGE

High-Stakes Demand High Accuracy

Data Chaos: Award letters lack any standardization. Formats, layouts, and data presentation vary wildly—even within the same institution.

AI Risks: Out-of-the-box LLM solutions could hallucinate numbers, produce unreliable outputs, and rack up unsustainable costs on a nonprofit budget.

Multi-Tiered Users: Three distinct audiences with different needs: students (mobile-first comparison tools), VSAC admins (full platform control and analytics), and partner loan organizations (curated access to qualified leads).

Cross-Platform Demands: The solution needed native-quality iOS and Android apps plus an intuitive desktop admin portal—without building everything twice.

Smart Ad Logic: Loan advertisements needed a hierarchical display, always showing nonprofit providers in the student's state first.

Solution

Cross-Platform:
One Codebase, Three Audiences

NineTwoThree assembled an expert team and followed a proven de-risking process, starting with collaborative workshops to validate requirements before writing code.

Technical Architecture:

ML-Powered Extraction: Built a custom model combining image preprocessing, OCR, and targeted LLM refinement—avoiding expensive, hallucination-prone AI-only approaches
Terminology Standardization: Built databases mapping term variations to standardized categories for accurate cross-school comparisons
React Native: Developed once, deployed to both iOS and Android, cutting development time and maintenance costs
Tiered Admin System: Created distinct permission levels for VSAC admins versus partner organizations

Key Features:

Students photograph or upload award letters; AI extracts and standardizes data into clear line items

Side-by-side college cost comparison with true remaining balance calculations

Manual editing capability to maintain user trust and control

Personal funds integration for a complete financial picture

PDF sharing with parents, teachers, and counselors

Custom push notifications for FAFSA deadlines

Qualified lead generation showing partner organizations' exact student financial gaps for targeted loan offers

Students photograph or upload award letters; AI extracts and standardizes data into clear line items

Side-by-side college cost comparison with true remaining balance calculations

Manual editing capability to maintain user trust and control

Personal funds integration for a complete financial picture

PDF sharing with parents, teachers, and counselors

Custom push notifications for FAFSA deadlines

Qualified lead generation showing partner organizations' exact student financial gaps for targeted loan offers

IMPACT

Creating a Win-Win for Students & VSAC

Award Advisor transformed VSAC from a single-service nonprofit into a multi-revenue platform operator.

100% Revenue Creation

With the creation of their lead marketplace VSAC can generate income from a source that was previously unavailable, allowing the project to be ROI-positive.