Twenty-five teams of college students worked feverishly in Columbus, Ohio, racing against the clock during JPMorganChase’s Code for Good Hackathon earlier this month. The event is part of the firm’s Tech for Social Good program and each Hackathon brings together changemakers and nonprofit organizations to solve real-world problems, allowing students to “showcase their tech skills and work alongside a team, guided by technologists, to make a difference in our communities.”

This year, one of those real-world challenges came from Modern States: how to equip learners with the best possible information about where CLEP exams are accepted. And for institutions to update CLEP policies without friction, so data stays accurate and trusted.

After a short overview of our mission and model, the eight student teams assigned to Modern States were tasked with building a tool that helps learners identify CLEP-accepting colleges and provides institutions an easy, reliable way to keep their credit acceptance policies up to date. It’s an active challenge for Modern States with large-scale impact for learners, and for 24 hours, students worked with remarkable focus and determination.

Members of our team, Whitney Macdonald, Ben Shapiro, Shaun Yoder and Angie Hance, met with students to answer questions about user needs, credit transfer complexities, and the features that would best support learners and institutions alike.

As time flew by and the countdown screens around the conference center flipped from red to green, students refined everything from in-state filters and radius searches with geographic mapping to conversational AI assistants that support both learners and administrators, as well as more granular details like transcript-fee information.

By the next morning, each team had 10 minutes to show off what they built. Ben, Whitney, Shaun and Angie evaluated the prototypes based on creativity, appearance, and – most importantly – how well the solution would work for actual Modern States, our learners, and colleges/universities.

Team 3 rose to the top. Their tool featured a clean, intuitive front end and a technically strong back end, supported by an AI integration, that made their solution stand out. The team struck the right balance between aesthetics and functionality, delivering a prototype that clearly met Modern States’ needs and outperformed the competition. As Ben put it, “The engineering and functionality were at different level, the winning solution incorporated all of the core requirements and included thoughtful and innovative additions.”

Modern States is incorporating the strongest patterns from the hackathon prototypes into the CLEP Acceptance Tool roadmap. Near-term priorities include an intuitive admin console for colleges to update policies, and enhanced filtering for learners searching by location, scores, and costs. The work these students accomplished in 24 hours will help thousands of learners determine where their CLEP credits are accepted and save money on their path to a degree.

Modern States is grateful for the ingenuity and effort of all the student teams. Their work reflects the very spirit of Code for Good: technology and talent coming together to advance opportunity.

Huge thanks to the Code for Good organizers, mentors, and the subject matter experts who gave their weekend to improve a tool that helps learners earn more affordable college credit. Your work accelerates our mission.