BU Rate

BU Rate is a full-stack course discovery and review platform built for Boston University students.
It helps students explore courses, read anonymous reviews, track HUB progress, and get AI-assisted course advice — all in one place.

The platform is designed to be secure, scalable, and data-driven, with a modern React frontend and a Spring Boot backend.

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Features

Course Discovery & Search

• Browse 7,500+ BU courses with pagination and sorting
• Advanced filtering by:
  • College
  • Department
  • HUB requirements
  • Minimum rating
  • Prerequisites
• Keyword search by course code or name
• Detailed course pages with ratings and reviews

Anonymous Reviews & Voting

• Create, edit, and delete anonymous course reviews
• Filter reviews by instructor
• View instructor-specific scores
• Upvote and downvote reviews to surface helpful feedback
• Personal “My Reviews” section for users

User Accounts & Security

• Email-verified user registration
• JWT-based authentication and authorization
• Secure password reset and update flows
• Account settings management
• Full account deletion support

HUB Progress Tracking

• Mark courses as completed
• Automatic HUB requirement progress calculation
• Personalized dashboard with academic overview

AI Course Advisor

• Chat-based advisor trained on:
  • BU course data
  • Student reviews
• Ask natural questions about:
  • Course difficulty
  • Workload
  • Comparisons between classes
  • Academic fit
• Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) pipeline using vector embeddings

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Tech Stack

Backend

• Java 17
• Spring Boot 3
• Spring Security + JWT
• Spring Data JPA (Hibernate)
• PostgreSQL + pgvector
• LangChain4j (RAG)
• JSoup (course ingestion)
• JUnit + H2 (testing)
• Resend (email delivery)

Frontend

• React
• TypeScript
• Vite
• Bootstrap
• Custom CSS

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API Overview

Authentication

• POST /api/auth/register
• POST /api/auth/verify
• POST /api/auth/login
• POST /api/auth/forgot-password
• POST /api/auth/reset-password
• PUT /api/auth/update-password
• GET /api/auth/me

Courses

• GET /api/courses
• GET /api/courses/{id}
• GET /api/courses/search
• GET /api/courses/colleges
• GET /api/courses/departments/{college}

Reviews

• POST /api/reviews/course/{courseId}
• PUT /api/reviews/{reviewId}
• DELETE /api/reviews/{reviewId}
• GET /api/reviews/course/{courseId}
• GET /api/reviews/my-reviews

Votes

• POST /api/votes/review/{reviewId}
• GET /api/votes/review/{reviewId}

Users

• GET /api/users/dashboard
• GET /api/users/hub-progress
• POST /api/users/completed-courses/{courseId}
• DELETE /api/users/completed-courses/{courseId}
• PUT /api/users/account
• DELETE /api/users/delete

AI Advisor

• POST /api/ai/chat
• POST /api/ai/sync-courses
• POST /api/ai/sync-reviews

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AI Advisor (RAG)

The AI Advisor uses a Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) pipeline:

• Courses and reviews are embedded using MiniLM
• Embeddings are stored in PostgreSQL via pgvector
• Relevant context is retrieved at query time
• Responses are generated using LLMs (OpenAI / Gemini)

This ensures responses are grounded in real BU course and review data.

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Local Development

Backend

./gradlew bootRun

Frontend

npm install
npm run dev

Environment Variables (Backend)

POSTGRES_USER=
POSTGRES_PASSWORD=
JDBC_DATABASE_URL=
JWT_SECRET_KEY=
RESEND_API_KEY=
GOOGLE_API_KEY=

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Testing

• JUnit and Spring Boot Test
• H2 in-memory database for isolated tests
• Spring Security test utilities

Run tests:

./gradlew test

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Disclaimer

BU Rate is an independent project and is not officially affiliated with Boston University.