Your First 15 Minutes

This walks you through everything that happens right after you create an account, end to end, so you know what to expect at each stage. Most people get through all of it in about 15 minutes.

1. Build your first student profile

Onboarding starts by asking for background information — the student's name, GPA, education level, field of study, and test scores. You can paste in an existing resume or bio, fetch it from a URL, or upload a PDF/DOCX file, and OppPaths will use AI to pull the details into the form automatically so you do not have to retype everything. Review what it filled in, correct anything it got wrong, and confirm. See Create a Student Profile for more on this step, including what to do later if you want to fill in more detail.

2. Get a profile assessment (optional)

Next you can run a quick AI assessment of the profile: a strength score out of 100, a few strengths, a few areas to improve, and — if any scholarships match well — a ranked list with match scores. This step uses one AI credit, so you can skip it if you would rather save the credit and come back to it later from the Students page.

3. Pick a scholarship (or skip it)

You will see a searchable list of scholarships, sorted by match score if you ran the assessment. Pick one to build your project around, or skip this and add a scholarship later. See Scholarships That Fit You.

4. Confirm your project

Give the project a title and, if you know it, a deadline. This creates your workspace for that specific application. See Create a Project.

5. See your fit analysis

If you picked a scholarship, OppPaths automatically compares the profile against its requirements and shows a fit score plus your top gaps — specific, actionable things to work on. This also runs in the background, so you can navigate away and come back. See Run the Fit Analysis.

6. Generate your first document

Choose a document type — SOP, CV, cover letter, or reference letter — and OppPaths drafts it using the student profile and the scholarship's real requirements. This is a background job too; you will get a notification when it is ready. See Generate a Document.

Note: A freshly generated document is a strong first draft, not a finished one. It may come back as an outline with [bracketed] placeholders if the profile is still thin in places — that is normal, and Complete a Framework Document walks you through filling those in with a short guided chat.

What happens next

From here you are in your project workspace, where you can refine the document, upload supporting materials, plan a timeline, track progress, and eventually mark the application as submitted. See Track Progress and Submit or Archive for the finish line.

Two AI credits typically get spent in this walkthrough (the profile assessment and the document) — part of the one-time starter credits your Free plan includes, with plenty of room to keep going. See How Plans and Credits Work for the full picture.