Back to NYUSHTorch

NYU Shanghai student project

About NYUSHTorch

Unofficial Free to use Student-built Open source

Project overview

NYUSHTorch is a student-built academic planning and peer-learning platform for the decisions NYU Shanghai students make across four years: what to take, when to take it, how requirements fit together, what can be completed away, and what other students experienced in a course.

Instead of treating planning, degree progress, prerequisite research, study-away equivalencies, reflections, and learning resources as separate tasks, NYUSHTorch connects them around one student profile and one saved academic plan.

Platform

What NYUSHTorch brings together

Four-year Major Plan

Build a semester-by-semester plan for a major, minor, approved double major, and concentration. Load a realistic default route, move courses between terms, record placement exams, compare saved copies, and optionally add paid winter or summer study.

Recommendations use the selected program, concentration, graduating class, completed prerequisites, course availability, and the requirements still open in the plan.

Degree Audit

Read degree progress in worksheet order, including Core Curriculum, major requirements, concentration choices, capstone work, and electives. Requirement logic supports required courses, choose-one groups, select-X groups, category courses, and equivalent courses.

Bulletin rules can vary by graduating class, while language requirements follow the student identity saved in the profile.

Study Away planning

Explore approved course equivalencies across NYU locations, plan study-away terms, and find non-Shanghai courses that can satisfy an open requirement. The planner checks equivalent courses so the same academic content is not counted twice.

New York is used as the common default study-away route, while students can still explore other available locations.

Course intelligence

Open a course to review credits, campus, semester availability, prerequisites, anti-requisites, requirement placement, and equivalent offerings. Student plans and reflections can also show when students usually take a course and how difficult it felt by year.

Learning Paths and Course Reflections

Follow prerequisite routes from foundations to advanced topics, including requirements with all-of and one-of choices. Students can share reflections with their class year, difficulty, workload, recommendation, and practical advice for future students.

Marketplace and community

Preview, upload, discover, purchase, rate, and report student learning resources through the token marketplace. Seller ratings, purchase records, quality checks, and moderation controls support a more trustworthy exchange.

Torchlight adds student and alumni pathways, while My Page collects saved plans, reflections, resources, profile details, and account activity.

Personalized planning

One profile, different academic rules

Graduating classSelects the appropriate Bulletin curriculum and places the current-semester marker.
Major, minor, and concentrationScopes the audit, default plan, course bank, and recommendations.
Student identityApplies the relevant EAP or Chinese language sequence across planning, audit, and export.
Saved activityKeeps plans, reflections, purchases, uploads, ratings, and profile settings connected to the account.

Data and responsibility

A planning aid, not an official record

Academic data is assembled from NYU and NYU Shanghai Bulletins, curriculum worksheets, published course schedules, approved study-away equivalency lists, and maintained project datasets. Reflections, ratings, pathways, and marketplace resources are contributed by members of the student community.

Important: NYUSHTorch is not an official NYU service and does not replace Albert, the current NYU Shanghai Bulletin, official degree worksheets, or academic advising. Always verify important academic decisions with official NYU sources and your advisor.

Source code on GitHub

Creators and maintainers

Mengzhe Yang
Creator and maintainer
Shengdong Li
Creator and maintainer
Jingwei Gao
Creator and maintainer

Development

Claude Fable
Development
Codex 5.6
Development

Special thanks

Ryan Gu
Planning-workflow research, curriculum data validation, product improvement proposals, and code contributions. Ryan also created the independent NYUSH Course Planner, whose focused planning work offered useful ideas and comparison points for this project.
Sam Liu
Improvement proposals and code contributions

Contact