Checking grades, planning homework, and looking at the clock every so often to see when class is going to be over are all essential aspects of a high school student’s everyday life. Hoping to put his coding skills to use, senior Srujan Mupparapu decided to create UpGrade, a mobile app that supports HAC along with many other key features, to help his peers and all high school students across Frisco ISD easily stay on top of school.

“The HAC website and official mobile app felt very outdated and difficult to use to me, so I decided that I would make a mobile app that could not only make HAC better but also help students with many more features,” Srujan said via email.

Srujan was initially inspired by the Graded app (the official mobile app for HAC) and how much students loved it, but felt that there was so much that could be improved and added to it, thus being motivated to make his own app that would be as useful as possible to students.

“For just being launched [UpGrade] works very well,” senior Sofia Calderon said in a review in the App Store. “Usually with apps the first version is very buggy, but there’s a lot of features that show time and attention to detail was taken. The animations, the aesthetics, and the features it has really take into account [of] the users being students. I usually used GradePro and Graded before, but literally within seconds of exploring this new app I went ahead and canceled my subscription and moved to this new one. Excited to see this grow and use it this school year!!”
Senior Mithil Kansara has similar thoughts on the new app.

“This app revolutionizes the way students can look at their grades with many important and useful features and a very user-friendly interface,” Kansara said in a review in the App Store.

According to Srujan, the process was very lengthy, as it required many adjustments and had occasional obstacles along the way.

“The process of making the app started during eLearning [in the spring], but most of the work happened during the summer, where I spent around 42 hours a week on the app,” Srujan said. “I had an unfinished version that I had worked on during the winter months but I decided to trash it when I came up with new and better ideas for the app, which was a difficult choice. The most difficult part was being able to get data from HAC, where I spent almost a month just figuring out how to extract all the data and format it. In order to avoid running into problems later, I spent weeks designing almost every aspect of the app ahead of time, and only spent around 60% of my time actually coding the details. After countless hours and thousands of lines of code, I was able to create UpGrade.”

Currently, Srujan is working on future updates for the app, designing new features, and fixing bugs along the way.

“The main feature I am working on right now is having notifications for when a teacher enters a grade into HAC,” Srujan said. “Beyond the mobile app, I am planning on making a website version of the app in the future.”

Srujan hopes to utilize his coding skills in the future, as he plans to major in computer science and either major or minor in mathematics in college next fall.

“After college, I want to join a tech company or startup where I can gain experience in software development, and gain exposure to specialized fields like machine learning,” Srujan said. “Eventually, I want to be a machine learning engineer and create impactful technology.”

Note: Since the app is new, ‘UpGrade’ searched by itself will not rank in search results; ‘UpGrade HAC’ must be entered in order for it to rank. A direct download link that works on both the App Store and the Play Store and a QR code for that link has therefore been included for convenience.