I'm Angad Bhargav, a member of the Amador Valley High School Class of 2024, and the creator of BetterQ. In the five years I used Q, I always disliked how tedious it was to view course information and use the portal effectively. During my sophomore year final exams, I decided to do something about it.
I first started developing BetterQ just for myself, but as I showed the project to others, I realized there was a demand for BetterQ across the PUSD student body. At the start of my junior year, I deployed BetterQ to the public—free of charge. The site began picking up steam during fall semester finals season and, by the end of the year, BetterQ was receiving 1,200+ distinct daily users across PUSD.
At the start of my senior year, PUSD transitioned away from Q and started using Synergy as its student information system. As a result, BetterQ (which has been built on top of Q) is now effectively unusable.
Creating BetterQ was easily one of the most rewarding things I ever did in high school and, while it's unfortunate my work can no longer be used, I'm so glad I was able to make life a little easier for the students who were able to use it.
A few people have reached out to me about branching out BetterQ to serve other school districts that still use Q. I'm more than happy to do this, but before I can, I'll need to receive explicit permission from these districts. BetterQ was only able to operate in PUSD because I had received permission.
I'm currently a freshman at UC Berkeley, studying electrical engineering and computer science. If you have any questions or suggestions relating to BetterQ, please direct them to angad.bhargav@berkeley.edu .